[Dan]

I know this has been going on for a least a year now, where Subaru offers you a minimum trade-in value, sight unseen, for your car based on the year and mileage. Of course, they have to inspect it and there are some limitations to it and if everything looks peachy-keen, they may even offer higher than the minimum (guessing that doesn't happen often, but still).

Have any of you taken advantage of this program? I ask because we got an offer in the mail a couple days ago, for $15,300 for ours with about 41,000 miles on it. Now this would leave us "upside-down" by a little bit, assuming that we got the minimum offer. However, I also noticed lately that folks have been picking up '05 XTs for $21-22,000. That's a pretty healthy discount and with the amount we still owe, it'd be about a $25,000 final price. And that's still a lot lower than sticker on an '06.

So I'm a little bit tempted, especially since it would lower our payment by, umm, around $80. Either that or we could shorten the term by a year. I'm leaning towards a lower payment since it frees up some cash with the option of making larger payments in the future.

One sticky part is that our local dealer has one turbo in stock. Not one turbo Forester, but one turbo Subaru - a WRX Sport Wagon. Everything else is N/A and auto. Bleh.

Any thoughts on, or experience with, this program offer?

 

[tre36]

It's just a gimmit to get you in the door. I get those letters from SOA and from my dealer all the time. There are always more finer print when you step into the dealer. Just think of those letter as an advertisement and nothing more. The dealer would either hammer you for the things they see with your car when you bring it in, the price of the car in question you wish to purchase, or interest rates.

I think you are better off selling the car to a private party and going to the dealer with a hefty down payment for a newer car. My family all have subarus and none of us have paid more than invoice price for a new car. You get more your way with a hefty down payment.

 

[mikebike357]

My local dealer is offering $2k ABOVE the Subaru GTP price. I almost wet myself when they said how much they'd give me for my Forester... But I declined.

 

[Peaty]

I used it to get my B9. I got the GTP on my 02 OB and then got the B9 at dealer invoice. At the time they also offered 500 Subaru Bucks (still waiting for those) Make sure you have the letter you got in the mail and take it with you. At least that's what my dealer did YMMV I suppose.

 

[brett s]

I got almost as much as the GTP letter stated (within $500) when I traded my 04 FXT - with 70k on it...

 

[FirstForester]

about gtp

When I read the fine print on the gtp program on my offer it said up to 24000 miles which I assume is on all letters at least it was on the website

In my case 04 subaru legacy with 9200 miles on it my GTP letter guaranteed
13,700
after dickering at the dealership my LLBean Forester sticker was 28100

ending price 23,400 and got the first 370.00 payment paid by Subaru with that bonus deal they had going

I guess it's hard to tell if they are giving you a great trade-in or taking it off the sticker

Remember 1000 rebate was involved
I hope this gives you some ideas