RE: A4 Dealers and Prices in SF Bay Area

[oleg@veritas.com (Oleg Kiselev)]

>Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:32:41 -0700
>From: Ken Owyang <ken@marimba.com>
>Subject: A4 Dealers and Prices in SF Bay Area
>
>Dear Ouattro Listers -
>
>My girlfriend is looking to buy an A4 in the near future.  In this
>regard, we'd like the value of your experiences.  Any input you can
>provide would be greatly appreciated!  Please respond directly to us as
>well as the list.  Thanks in advance!
>
>First of all the car we are looking for is as follows:
>
>1998 or 99 A4 2.8 Quattro, Silver with Black or Grey interior
>Auto/Tiptronic transmission
>Leather
>Audio package (OK, but not required)
>All weather package (OK, but not required)
>Convenience package
>Sport package
>Dealer invoice with Destination charge $32,242
>MSRP with Destination charge $36,355
>
>Questions:
>1.  Based on recently shopping trips we believe we can order the car for
>about $2k off list, which just about splits the MSRP and Invoice prices
>and is about 7% over invoice.  Is this a fair deal?  Or should be
>negotiating harder?

audis are hot in this area, especially a4q.  you will not have much room
for negotiations.  however, you can use one of the for-fee buying services 
(car bargains is $160 or so) or one of the free internet quote services
(auto-by-tel (through edmunds.com), autoweb.com, a few others) to see what
kind of a price they can get you.  you have nothing to lose with the online
services (they are free!) and it'll give you an idea of what passes for a
good deal -- then you can go and try do better!

second: go out of the area.  way out.  dealers in sacramento are a lot
hungrier for deals than here.  same with los angeles.  if you know
*exactly* what you want, you can make the deal on the phone, then fly there
for some under $150 to pick up the car.  $150 is a good trade-off for
saving $1000... 

don't worry about the problems with having the car serviced.  we got our
a6q at the andersen-behel audi on stevens creek in san jose after coming to
an impasse at carlsen in palo alto ($1500 difference!).  but we take the
car to be fixed at carlsen.

>2.  We live in the SF Bay area.  Any comments, good or bad, on dealers
>in the area?  Diablo Audi and Negherbon Audi are the closest, but SF
>(Royal Motors) and the south bay (Rector) are close too.

i actually like carlsen -- they seem like genuinely nice people. 

stevens creek was easy to deal with: we called, asked if they can meet
our price, they said yes and we came down to sign the papers (because
the car we ended up getting was slightly different from the car we
priced up, it took 15-20 minutes to argue about the exact price, but
that wasn't hard).

we did not get a very good treatment at rector, so we decided not to
deal with them, but a friend of ours had very good experience with
them.  i suppose they are not as used to dealing with unshaven people 
who look like bums, wearing thread-bare jeans and stained t-shirts looking
to drive expensive cars.  our friend, on the other hand, is a salesman and
always looks "professional"...  on the other hand, andersen and carlsen
were very willing to talk to us and let us drive anything we wanted as many
times as we wanted -- they are closer to the silicon valley :-)

>3.  Any feedback, good or bad, on the options we've listed above?  Is

silver is definitely a good color, so is black leather (both of our cars are 
silver/black :-).  grey leather does not look as good as black, in my opinion.

all-weather gives you the heated seats, right?  we thought it was a gimmic
in this climate until we got a car with heated seats.  it's *really*
useful even in our mild winter.

power seat controls are good -- but you may not need them if you have only
one person driving the car.  the manual adjustments on the audi are
reasonably good, unless you change drivers all the time (and there the a6's
memory seats slaved to the remote door controls are really useful!).

>the Bose upgrade worth the money or should we just buy the Cd changer
>for about $500?

i really like the bose stereo in our a6.  the sound is very clean and the
cd changer has only one flaw -- it's in the trunk (it would have been
better to have it in the glove compartment).  the reception will suck no
matter which stereo you get.  apparently that's an audi "trademark"
feature.  the subwoofer and the tuning of the speakers to the car may be
hard to replicate with the aftermarket hardware...

-- 
Oleg Kiselev                              oleg at veritas dot com
VERITAS Software
(650)335-8586