Posts
1294
Joined
3/3/2010
Location
Nor Cal, CA
US
Fantasy
312th
Edited Date/Time
4/28/2012 9:41am
I'm in the market to buy a new bike and have been out of the loop lately with school and work but what brand(Suzuki, Yamaha,Kawasaki, Honda, KTM) has the best deal for financing right now. I've been contemplating whether i get a 250 two stroke or four stroke also, just want to hear your guys' opinions.
The Shop
Better to start low and leave some room to negotiate if they play hardball. But I would probably not budge off of 5500.. don't need a new bike that bad, and they need some sales. Buyers market.
Pit Row
I have a good friend/mechanic who I have do some work on my bikes from time to time that has worked at a couple local dealers and he tells me that the dealers are paid by the mfgs. to assemble the bikes from the crates and that the dealers don't actually get charged the mysterious freight charge. Funny that everyone complains that sales are down yet when they have a buyer they want to take advantage of them. No freight, freight or double the freight? What's the real deal here? I've only ever seen a local dealer try to hit me with freight and setup once out of about twenty new bikes I've bought over the years. And that particular bike was marked down so much that I didn't question it. But even then, freight and setup combined was less than $200.00 on a 2007 CR85 that was sitting on the dealer floor in 07 with a $1799.00 price hanging on it. I was still out the door at $2200.00 with zero negotiating.
Never finance anything except your home. It's just money thrown away.
'There are none so blind as those who will not see...'
If financing is your only option and the alternative is not riding, wouldn't you rather pay a little more and ride? I sure would.
Buyers beware: read the fine print. Motorcycle financing (especially for off-road motorcycles) is extremely risky for banks. They like to gouge us MX guys to make sure they profit before the loan is paid off or the borrower goes into default (which happens a lot in this demographic, for some reason.) So, be wary of 0% interest deals.... most of the time it's 0% interest for 24 months, and then 17.99% after that, or some other ungodly amount. Make sure you understand how the loan works before you sign on the dotted line.
Also, they can't charge you interest on money you didn't borrow, so put as much down as you can afford. This will reduce the dollar amount you are paying interest on and thus the total amount of interest over the life of the loan.
Finally, look for better financing elsewhere. There's no reason you couldn't find a cheap interest rate at a bank or credit union, and also take the rebate that Bandito mentioned. If you want to triple-up, let the motorcycle shop secure financing for you with a bank other than the manufacturer's and then pay that loan off with your own financing from your bank or CU. The shop gets extra money called "participation" for sending loans to their in-house banks, and they will often give you a better deal on the bike since they are making a little extra on the back end. This way you get the manufacturer's rebate, a better discount from the dealer, AND a decent interest rate.
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