Hello. Just a little curious as to see details about this "sale" and if anyone on here has actually purchased a ram with these "incentives".
Dodge says they are offering 0% interest on their 2008 (and possibly 2007 models,can't remember) and the lifetime warranty. It sounds like a good thing, but is it?I have a 2006 Dodge Ram SLT 2wd 5.7L Hemi with 30,000 miles on it, but I am thinking about trading it in, just mainly for the lifetime warranty issue, but the 0% would be nice too. What does anyone think??? Any input would be great, thanks.

 

A guy at work just bought one under this program. All i know is that you need to be TOP tier qualified to get it, like a credit score of 800 or better

 

In most cases, 0% financing from the manufacturer is in lieu of a rebate. According to Dodge.com, if you're in the L.A. area, the deal for an '08 QC iseither $6750 cash allowance, or 0% for up to 60 months plus $1750 bonus cash.

So suppose you take the $6750 cash, and you get the typical deal advertised in the L.A. area newspapers (about $12K off) plus you put down some cash so that your loan amount is $20K, for 5 years (60 months).Using the auto loan calculator on Bankrate.com as well as the national average interest rate for a car loan of about 7.5% (most of us should be able to do better than that), your payment on a 60 month loan would be $400.76, and total interest paid over 5 years would be $4045.54.

So already one can see that getting the extra $5000 cash NOW in the cash-only offer will only cost $4045.54 over the next 5 years when compared to the 0% interest loan from Dodge. Personally, I would go for the $6750 cash.

Let's look at this from another angle...

You can get the 0% financing plus $1750 cash allowance; it might sound like the payments will be lower. But doing so would mean that you'd have a loan that's $25K at 0%, since you have $5000 less cash back from Dodge that you could apply to the principal than if you took the $6750 cash. Guess what - your payment would be more... $416.67/month for 60 months. Over60 payments that's over $1000 morethan if you took the cash-only offer. My conclusion again: take the $6750 cash.

Of course, this is all subject to my ability to do math at 1:00am in the morning. I'm gettinga bit groggy.

One might argue that because of their credit rating, the interest rate they could get would be much higher(i.e. 9.5%) such that they would be spending over $5K in interest over 5 years. If that's the case, qualifying for the 0% interest loan may not be possible anyway, so the only option the person would have is to take the $6750 cash.

Hope this helps. FWIW, I took the $6K rebate over the 0% financing back in July. Interest rate on the loan is 6.15%, from Chrysler Financial.

 

great work there thebean, very infomrative. I will keep that address too for future reference. The 0% is pointless unless you have perfect credit. I like the rebates anyway, always seem the get a better deal on your truck. Thx for that info m8

 

I just bought my 08 QC last week. I'm pretty sure you automatically get the "lifetime warranty" which really equates to the 5yr / 100K powertrain warranty. Thebean brought up a great point! I actually did the math before buying my truck, I saved 35.00 /month and 6000.00 off the total cost, by going with the 6.8% they offered.

 

Unknownfire22,

Before you get to excited, find out what they will give youfor a trade. Unless you put a good amount down in 06, you most likely owe more than the allowance they are willing to give.

 

You don't need a new truck you wacker LOL

 

dkfire2 has a point, made me think of something...

unknownfire22, here's something to consider, maybe you already thought about it... the brand spanking new '09s will be out soon, perhaps you might consider waiting until then to see if you'd like one of those? If you try one and don't think it's worth the extra $$$ over an '08 (doubt there'd be a rebate on the first year of the new model) you could probably land a really sweet deal on aleftover'08 at that time....