Now may be the best time to buy if you want a 2009 Ram.

Here's what I read from Business Week:

"If car shoppers are still interested, they'll find plenty of deals. The clouds of bankruptcy over Chrysler and General Motors (GM) have greatly reduced demand. As a result, leading car-shopping site Edmunds.com says the average discount being offered on Chryslers, Dodges, and Jeeps is about 23% off sticker, vs. an average of 16% for the rest of the industry.

It's not impossible to find discounts of more than $10,000 on Chrysler minivans and SUVs, as well as Dodge pickup trucks that dealers are trying to clear from their lots. Older car models, such as the Chrysler PT Cruiser and Chrysler 300, are also seeing discounts of more than $5,000 at some dealerships. But those heavy incentives may dry up soon as Chrysler idles its production plants while it is in bankruptcy reorganization."

If they're talking about $10k in discounts, then anyone with some negotiating skills can still get the $15k off we were getting a few months ago. And dealers should be desperate to move inventory right now just to stay alive.

But if you wait too long, inventories will start dropping and discounts will start drying up and prices will basically increase. At least this will happen for the short term. What will happen in the long term is still unknown.

The one thing to remember is that there are going to be a lot of dealer closings coming up, so if you only have 1 dealer in town, they may not be around for long:

"Forty-five Chrysler dealers went out of business in April, and more will be shuttered in the weeks ahead. Under Chapter 11, Chrysler can cut dealers without worrying about repercussions from state franchise laws. The company has about 3,150 dealers and is said to want to cut as many as 1,200 to 1,500 of them in markets where too many are competing for too few sales."

Luckily I have like 5 in town.

 

Makes sense, but my deal is already worked

 

What's the ideal "dealer density"? I live in Metro Atlanta, and I can think of 5 Chrysler dealers off the top of my head, and if I thought harder, could maybe come up with 10, but we're no small city. Say we went down to one or two, and I live 30 miles north of downtown, I don't want to drive 50 miles to one in the south of the city.

As for discounts, I got $13k two weeks ago.

 

94rt10ohio - Factories are idled. Unfortunately your truck isn't being delivered for another 40 - 70 days.

 

makes sense to me, there's only 2 dealers on island and alot of dodges, i doubt any will be going out of business here. Hopefully chrysler gets their stuff together, maybe they'll find some 5.9l Cummins laying around and will have to sell them again you know where i'd be

 

we have 3 dealers in town. ours is dodge/chrysler, across town is dodge, and in the middle there's chrysler/jeep. with 350,000 to 400,000 people in town, we all should be safe but you never know. i think the next few weeks will be pretty interesting, especially for us employees.

 

We only have one Dodge dealership in our town, and Dodge is the only brand they sell. They have been in business for 75 years, so hopefully they will survive this depression as well.

And I agree, now is the time to buy a Ram if you want to buy one in the next few years. I got $12K off MSRP on mine, one month ago.

MOPWR2U

 

Too bad I done bought near the 1st of this month! It will be interesting to see what kind of deals are going to be offered in this Sundays paper.

 

which one in ATL? $13k sounds good and better than what most of Nashville is offering up here.i would drive down there for that!

 

Ed Voyles in Marietta. Wasn't easy though! Initial deal was about 10k off. Showed them Palmer Dodge's website (they are in Lawrenceville), and asked them to match price, which they did, without me driving to Lawrenceville, which is a good drive for me. From memory, they (Ed Voyles) have about 50 '09 RAMs. They'll cut you a deal, but you have to work for it. Nothing new there then! Ask for Dick, and tell them Mark the English guy sent you. I'll get a referral fee and you'll get at least the deal I did. PM me if you're serious!