@catseye3 said in The Car-buying thread on Reddit:
@klaus said in The Car-buying thread on Reddit:
I bought a few new cars, but I bought them online, with no negotiations about anything. They offer a prize X for a specified car and I pay X or don't buy the car. Very simple and transparent. That's how I want to conduct business. There's no reason why buying a car has to be more complicated than ordering a USB cable on Amazon.
Klaus, I love this. Bookmarking it for when I'm ready to go that route.
I take it various extras are offered for X extra, so you can build your package? Yes on heater, no on AC and so on?
Yes. Germans are quite obsessive when it comes to configuring their cars. I understand that in the US one mostly selects an engine and a color and maybe has a selection of three extra features and that's it. Over here, people want to configure basically every screw. For instance, I read recently that of the millions of E class Mercedes that were sold in Germany, they have never sold the same configuration twice (except for a few mass orders from companies).
One peculiar aspect of car buying here is the "EU reimport". It turns out that it is often cheaper to buy a car in another EU country and reimport them (because for reasons I don't understand every country has different prices). I've already bought two "EU reimports" (there are dealers who specialize in these kinds of transactions and it will all be online).