[Latheesh]

2009: I test drove few new and used cars and almost finalized on A-Star top variant. Chevrolet Spark entered as a wild card entry (Reason 45000 GM discount+5k corporate discount+15 k dealer discount) OTR was coming around 3.9L OTR in Bangalore for top variant. It also had 3 year free maintenance offer. I was hesitant to take final call due to GM' future in India (yes in 2009). I came to know about GM employee discount from friends and got in touch with a friend in GM. He enquired and informed me that it is available for relatives as well. Discount was extra 10%, that sealed the deal, and I got the car for 3.6L in Bangalore.

[GBX]

The discounted car is being discounted for a reason. Quite likely, you'll forever be telling folks about the discount at dinner parties, since the rest of the car wasn't interesting enough for you to consider it sans discount.

IMO better to pay a premium for the car you really want, especially since there's so few enthusiast grade cars in the market anyway.

[porsche_guy]

Originally Posted by GBX

The discounted car is being discounted for a reason. Quite likely, you'll forever be telling folks about the discount at dinner parties, since the rest of the car wasn't interesting enough for you to consider it sans discount.

Not necessarily. Infact quite a few times you could get a car from a higher segment which is much more sorted fundamentally for the price of a lower segment car which is in demand. Infact in my case, I actually could go with the better car which I liked a lot more as well.

IMO better to pay a premium for the car you really want, especially since there's so few enthusiast grade cars in the market anyway.

Interesting you say this since the true "enthusiast grade" cars are usually the ones that don't sell in huge numbers and have massive discounts on them. Punto Abarth, Baleno RS, S Cross 1.6, Ford Figo S, Octavia RS245, VW GTI whatnot. I can go on and on.

[AYP]

Originally Posted by AYP

We switched over to the Palio.

Attachment 2221995

I wonder how I forgot this while making my earlier post.

Back in mid 2015, we were looking at a car to replace our 8 year old Fiesta. The budget was 15-18L on road. The contenders were the Hyundai Creta, Honda City, VW Vento, Hyundai Verna, Toyota Corolla and the Hyundai Elantra. All in their diesel guise.

The Creta and the Elantra were the strongest contenders and we had practically decided on the Elantra S diesel which was being made available to us for 18L on road Navi Mumbai after a discount of 80k.

My father casually enquired with the guys at VW about the Jetta Trendline. Trendline being a slow seller was not available for any discount but VW had a Jetta Comfortline in stock with goof discounts. This was a late 2014 manufactured car(pre-facelift) and was offered to us for a discount of 1.5L, taking its price to 19.5L on road. We promptly got her home.

[krishnakumar]

Absolutely yes!

I was in a CSUV dilemma which is explained in this thread. (Tata Nexon vs. Mahindra XUV300 vs. Kia Sonet | Which car should I get for 15 Lakhs?) My shortlisted cars were the Nexon and Sonet - both in their diesel guise. I had knocked out the XUV3OO because of the boot space. Many BHPians gave their valuable advice and insights, two of them being that a) XUV3OO is on discount and shorter wait time b) the boot space is sufficient for a couple.

The discount (and shorter wait time) was a considerably big factor for us to put it on the list, just to go check it out. And boy were we wowed. The only compromise seemd to be that put. To end the dilemma, we asked the SA to bring the car to our apartment and we checked by putting our luggages in various configurations. We were happy and immediately decided that this was the car we wanted. It was those moments were the wild card entry wins the show.

In fact, tomorrow we are going to make our booking and expecting delivery within 6 weeks. A detailed test drive, booking and ownership post will come pretty soon.

And quite strangely it might be the first ownership thread for XUV3OO in this forum? Very surprised since it is truly an enthusiast's car! I searched quite a bit but there aren't ownership threads like those of Reinhard's Ironhide. Hopefully, I can make up for that gap!

[jacobsam]

Back in the first quarter of 2020, when the transition of BS4 to BS6 was on we decided to get an automatic. We went to Bhopal and checked the available BS4 stock in showrooms. BS4 Nexon was without much discounts and BS6 was costing around the same. Honda Amaze CVT Diesel was available at 1030000 (On road approx). It was the most VFM from the stocks available and this tilted our decision towards it.

[rrsteer]

Two months back I bought a Kia Carnival (base variant) because of the INR 3.75 lac discount being offered on it, which made it cheaper to purchase than the Innova Crysta VX - otherwise my preference.

I think there is almost an unwritten rule - all Innova buyers have to upgrade to Crysta. I can count atleast 5-6 knowns who did exactly that. I was no different. I had gone to the Toyota showroom with the intent of booking a Crysta VX - a formality, in my eyes then, when we thought of making a trip to Kia just to check what was on offer with the Carnival, after being slightly disappointed with the Crysta's interiors and its pricing.

Needless to say, we were very impressed by the Carnival's interiors and who would not like to own a 200 bhp van? So, when the sales advisor put up a quote for the Carnival's base variant which was less than the Crysta's, we seriously started evaluating the Carnival. My big concern was its size, the width specifically and its overall reliability. Did a few test drives to allay our concerns around its size and spent some time on Google researching about its reliability. Turned out that it was a top pick in minivan segment in US by Consumer reports in the year 2018(from what I recall now), it fared the best among minivans in the JD power survey results for a few years and this particular generation was a best seller in Australia and had a lot of positive reviews for the diesel variant from down under. In addition, the Aussie media or at least some of them reported that Hyundai/Kia along with Mazda were the companies that had little or relatively very less issues with DPF. In short, better interiors and stronger performance at a slightly cheaper price due to discounting sealed the deal for me. Finally, my mother really liked the Carnival, although she wouldn't say so for the fear of influencing me such that it impacts my rational thinking. She is huge on doing long driving holidays with the full family. So this was also a birthday gift to her. Bought it home on her birthday, much to her delight!

[gungax]

When we started looking to buy a luxury car a month back, we started with Mercedes and finished with the Volvos. I am a huge fan of Volvos and just love their cars. However, since we had to wait for the launch of the new XC 60 and XC 40 delivery even in the best-case would be December, my wife insisted we look at Audi again.

After listening to the discount on the A4 offered to us, the look on my wife’s face took me back exactly 20 years ago when my wife (then girlfriend) was haggling for discounts on her first car - the Maruti Alto.

She didn’t even bother with another test drive. She was OK going a segment lower just for the discount. The only thing she asked me was if it was fun enough and comfortable enough for me as I do frequent solo intercity drives.

The A4 made me happy with a good engine. It made my son happy with its SUV like comfort and the discounts made my wife the happiest.

[PrasannaDhana]

One thing we can notice here is that the heavy/substantial discounts were all done in segments that are expensive/upper-middle class target segments.

The A, B, B+, C1, C2 segments remain aggressive with the discounts, unless the car is a major dud. Sadly some really capable & nice cars in the budget segments do end up as sales duds. While they cost less during the purchase, it is also harder and fetch far lesser resale after 5 or 6 years down the line.

Today's scenario, you can hope that the car gets delivered within a month of booking. If that happens, you are lucky. Dealers are snobby about the demand and mark it up as a reason for not giving any discounts, specially on models that are sales success.

Currently my friend visited Renault for looking at the Triber and was offered a handsome 70k discounts. A really nice car, but with the 1.0 N/A petrol and Renault badging, the resale will definitely bite him more than 70k in the future. I made him go for the Nexon XM(S) diesel, without any discounts whatsoever. When he tried bargaining, the sales guy just told "Sir there is 3 months waiting period. Many customers have already booked and are awaiting delivery. We don't give any discounts on altroz and nexon"

In the budget segments, 2019 third quarter- 2020 first quarter was a golden period due to bs4 to bs6 transition.

I was offered 2 lakhs off on Rapid diesel ambition, 3 lakhs off on Vento highline diesel and 1.9 lakhs off on Scross Zeta diesel. I missed them all.

[theabstractmind]

I have never been in a situation of this kind, honestly. My buying decisions are always driven by my budget, perception, preferences, finally touch and feel. If given the budget a product meets the remaining criteria, I just go for it. Be it clothes, footwear, gadgets, or car, or something else. Have never bought products which were discounted (or cheaper) but did not meet the basic requirements.

The first 4 cars I bought were without seeking to test drive and compare the competition on pricing (Nano, Used Palio, Punto, Kwid); of course I had driven most of the competition via friends or family. Only the current drive - Ameo 1.5 DSG was bought after driving a couple of other Automatics within my defined budget. A single drive and I knew within the budget (which was already being stretched) I can't get another car which feels and drives better. Just bought it after a nominal negotiation.

To conclude - I don't get swayed by discounts or lighter on wallet products so far as they fall within my affordability.

[sumitdongerkery]

For me, changing my car has always been because i started fancying a particular car. I have never been a situation where i decided to sell my car and then started evaluating options.

When we upgraded from Baleno to Octatvia way back in 2006, it was purely because Octavia was my dream car and I really stretched my budget to own one. In 2013 when i changed from Octavia to XUV, it was because i liked XUV. None of these decisions we driven because my earlier cars needed a replacement.

So my decisions were never driven by discounts but having said that i bargain really hard on the car i wanted to purchase

In my view for petrol heads discount would matter only when they have shortlisted multiple options. Dud car would never attract any attention however good the discount would be.

Cheers

[1.2TSI7DSG]

Difficult conversation!

So far, I have always stuck to the car that I had shortlisted outside of the commercial terms. I have also discussed about discounts with other showrooms/cars to help me negotiate the deal. But has a discount been so enticing that I have changed the car? No. That has never happened.

[jithin23]

For me it was purely timing I'd say. I got the same car, spec and color(EcoSport Titanium TDCi, L.blue color with Sync 3) I wanted and that too the dealer gave me a proper upper 5 digit figure discount with all my conditions agreed to. Sometimes buying a car from a smaller town works wonders which exactly happened in my case.

The icing on the cake was I saw my car in flesh and then I booked it and got it home within a week

[kovilkalai]

Originally Posted by GTO

Say, you had decided on Car A. Did you ever change it to Car B, primarily due to discounts on the latter? If yes, please tell us the entire story, the cars considered and the discount that drew you to change your original choice.

I wouldn't say I focus on discounts as much as I do the final price. When I was looking to replace my XUV500, I had cast a wide net - everything from a Tata Harrier to Fortuner/Endy/Kodiaq. The consideration set also included the Innova Crysta. Ultimately, I went with the Tata Hexa 4X4 manual in large part due to the final price - I saw tremendous value in it.

[MaheshY1]

I had shortlisted Beat D, Ritz D and Figo D. I loved the style, FE, GC of the Beat. The ergos, engine performance (compared to the other 2 cars) and Maruti badge of the Ritz and the handling of the Figo.

After one test drive, I started to like the Figo a lot more. While the Figo had almost no offers, the Beat's F-A-T discounts pulled me back. The numbers made sense on the excel sheet and I went with the Beat. No regrets.