Are Mazda's Really that inexpensive to purchase new?

Forgetting about the MX5 for the moment I was looking at the Mazda web side and was building various versions of the Mazda three and The six and I kept coming in with prices in the mid 20's for a new car. What is the catch? This seems very cheap to me for what you are getting. Am I missing something? I would assume that if you could find the car you wanted on a dealer lot you could haggle that down a bit.

I was surprised as I always thought that the 6 in particular was a more expensive car. I may have to stop in a dealer sometime and see.

They will try very hard to screw you on financing.

Mazda would probably love to hear that you think their cars are more expensive than they are.

Really? We got 0% 60 month on our Mazda3 in 2012, and the process was pretty straightforward.

Might be dealer specific? Not sure. I got 4% 48 month on my Mazda3 in 2012.

slowride wrote: They will try very hard to screw you on financing.

How so?

We just bought a 5 about a year or so ago.. The transaction was exactly what everyone says they want in car; we found the car we wanted, I said, "I have S-Plan," they gave us a price well below MSRP (about 2k less than truecar said was a good price), and we financed through them.

My finance experience was "Hey, my credit union will give me 2.4%, what can you do?" "We can do 2.2" "Book it, Danno."

Dean - That sounds about right. I forget what the price was for our 5 Touring (2.5l mid-level, cloth, automatic 5 speed), but I want to say it was around 23k-ish out the door?

My dad bought a 2015 3 s Grand Touring sedan for $22k last year. Seemed like a quite a deal to me.

Like all manufacturers, they'll offer a ridiculously low finance rate occasionally as part of a promotion.

What you won't get is $10,000 off like you will with an F-150.

My dad bought a new 2015 3 s Grand Touring sedan for $22k last year. Seemed like a quite a deal to me.

In reply to dean1484:

No catch.

As far as I'm concerned, mid-20's is about right for a 4cyl mid-size car, and too much for a compact car...But then again, I'm shocked by how much average people are willing to spend on their vehicles.

Keith Tanner wrote: Like all manufacturers, they'll offer a ridiculously low finance rate occasionally as part of a promotion. What you won't get is $10,000 off like you will with an F-150.

Yep, ridiculous incentives is where the domestics are king. Those brand new Chevy Cruze hatchbacks that start at $22k MSRP and only go up from there are somehow all selling for $17k. Makes you wonder just how much fluff is built into MSRP vs the imports...the $22k Chevy sure feels a lot more low-rent than the $22k Mazda.

They were advertising low apr at the time I was shopping, like 0.9% or something. The finance manager (I know this was probably not Mazda directly) lied to me about my credit score and claimed that Mazda wouldn't approve me for the lowest APR. I should have walked at that point but I didn't.

For the record I paid 23k (not counting the interest) for a 3i Grand Touring 5 door with everything but the tech package. I guess that is a near average price for this car but it seems insanely overpriced to me. I thought it should been around 17k. I know that is not a realistic price.

Keith Tanner wrote: Like all manufacturers, they'll offer a ridiculously low finance rate occasionally as part of a promotion. What you won't get is $10,000 off like you will with an F-150.

You mean that F150 they list for $10,000 more then they probably should?

aircooled wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote: Like all manufacturers, they'll offer a ridiculously low finance rate occasionally as part of a promotion. What you won't get is $10,000 off like you will with an F-150.

You mean that F150 they list for $10,000 more then they probably should?

That's the one I'll never take Ford pricing seriously. It's like the Eddie Bauer "everything was 50% overpriced before!" sales.

We bought a new '15 Mazda3 iSport (the base model) last year after the '16s came out using the motorsports s-plan and owner loyalty discount. The total was 18k out the door including tax, tags and all dealer fees (s-plan waives at least one of those fees). I'm very happy with that purchase.

I'm looking at a used car at the local Mazda dealer. They have new loaded Mazda6 Grand Tourings with hang tags on the mirrors for $29,000. They have a Touring priced at $23,000 on the mirror.

All "cars are too expensive these days" comments are from people who don't pay attention to the CPI. At some point in your life, you fix car prices in your head and then just become more and more appalled at the insane prices of new cars. Meanwhile, the price of those cars isn't really changing. The Miata is the example I'm most familiar with, obviously. Its pricing hasn't really changed over the last quarter century. Running the numbers, the Mazda3 sedan is about 13% more than a 1985 GLC Deluxe sedan - and it's pretty easy to see where that's going.

Yes, trucks are different. That's because the equivalent of modern trucks just didn't exist in the day.

My Dad just bought a new Mazda 6 with the manual trans. It's not loaded (he didn't want nav, or electronic do-dads) but it's very nice. He even has a sunroof I believe. He paid just a bit under $23K out the door.

Its a lot of car for the money.

My GF bought a 2017 3 Sport 6spd last month. She told them what she wanted, they offered the car at invoice. 0.9% over 72 months. The only thing they pushed a little on was the extra warranty and rustproofing, but once she said no, they dropped it.

My wife wants a car to replace the annoying WJ Grand Cherokee. She's trying to decide between a new Grand Cherokee and a CX-5. I'm pushing hard for the latter for a lot of reasons, and the massive savings are a bonus. Hell, we could get a CX-5 and make a real dent on the cost of a new fastback Miata for the price of the Jeep. Mazda threw me a couple of E-plan codes to sweeten the deal, too, although she gets fleet pricing on the Jeep.

This post has no real point other than to reiterate that Mazdas are well priced.

Keith Tanner wrote: All "cars are too expensive these days" comments are from people who don't pay attention to the CPI. At some point in your life, you fix car prices in your head and then just become more and more appalled at the insane prices of new cars. Meanwhile, the price of those cars isn't really changing. The Miata is the example I'm most familiar with, obviously. Its pricing hasn't really changed over the last quarter century. Running the numbers, the Mazda3 is about 13% more than a 1985 GLC - and it's pretty easy to see where that's going. Yes, trucks are different. That's because the equivalent of modern trucks just didn't exist in the day.

This is very, very true. I have the window sticker from when the first owner bought my Jeep in 1998. MSRP was listed as $39,215. If we run that through an inflation calculator, we get $58,065 in 2016 dollars. Now, let's go to the Jeep website and check the cost of a fully loaded top trim Grand Cherokee (excluding the SRT8). Looks like we come up with an MSRP of a little over $64k.

That's not a huge jump in price, and that includes quite a lot of creature comfort the older ones didn't offer. And that includes the diesel that wasn't available in 98 either.

If we look at the price for a 2wd base model Grand Cherokee in 98 vs now, the 98 had an MSRP of $25,945. That's $38,416 in 2016 dollars. A 2017 2wd base model has an MSRP of $30,935. So they've actually gotten significantly cheaper.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

While I agree car prices haven't really jumped up when you factor inflation, there is that whole wage issue. That is, wages have no where near kept up with inflation. When you look at the cost of a new vehicle VS personal income and realize its 75%+ of the average household yearly income (roughly 56k in 2015) perspective changes back to the "cars are to damn expensive" viewpoint.

Wages have outpaced inflation according to the US Census Bureau. Here's the average wage corrected for inflation.

The last 15 years have seen a slight drop since the peak for some groups. Squinting at the upper graph, it looks as if that's more the result of a historic peak around 2000 than a change in the average. But we all know that nothing happened before 2000 anyhow

turtl631 wrote: Really? We got 0% 60 month on our Mazda3 in 2012, and the process was pretty straightforward.

Same here! I got a decent price for a car that had a good amount of content, and 0% financing for 5 years. Couldn't beat it.

They usually do a 0% financing promo once a year on the 3's and 6's.