Motor Trend car reviews

A couple of weeks ago a middle-aged woman came to my dealership to buy one of our best-selling Bel Canto sedans. Before coming in, she had gone online and gotten a price quote from TrueCar. TrueCar passed along her contact information to us along with the quote. When I looked at the quote, which TrueCar calls a “Price Report, ” I was amazed by the amount of information it showed and its accuracy. The price was broken down like this:

TrueCar Member Network Estimated Price: $24, 019.00

Invoice Price: $23, 899.00

+ Options: ($0.00)

+ Regional Ad Fees ($0.00)

+ Destination Fee ($820.00)

+ Dealer Offset From Invoice (-$700.00)

– Dealer Cash ($0.00)

– Finance Cash ($0.00)

– Customer Incentives ($0.00)

– Program Incentives ($0.00)

Minimum Estimated Savings = $1, 696.00 Below MSRP

All you Rip Van Winkles who still believe in phony invoices or complain about the “lack of transparency” in car sales today need to snap out of your hundred-year sleep and take a look at a TrueCar Price Report. It’s ALL there. Every bit of it, except for dealer holdback and, curiously enough, MSRP, or manufacturer’s suggested retail price, but both are readily available elsewhere. This single e-mail from TrueCar provides the customer with everything the dealer knows. Which is truly remarkable if you think about it.

What exactly is TrueCar? Well, according to its website, it is an “information provider.” Founded in 2005, the California-based company collects pricing information on automobiles and passes it along to consumers at no charge. What’s different about TrueCar is that the information it provides is based on real-world transactions, relayed by participating dealerships, and it’s updated weekly, with manufacturer incentives checked daily. If you go to TrueCar’s website you can put in your ZIP code and pull up a graph representing what others in your area have paid for the vehicle you want within the past few weeks, ranging from the lowest (which it calls the “Unusually Low Price”) to the highest (“Above Market Price”). TrueCar will then provide you with a Price Report, which you can take to one of about 10, 000 participating TrueCar Certified Dealerships across the country, thus eliminating the hassle of car buying.

But TrueCar, like all third-party price providers, has it weaknesses. For one, what happens when consumers build a car online and get a Price Report from TrueCar only to find that the “virtual car” they’ve conjured up on the computer doesn’t exist or isn’t available in their area? Well, I’ve experienced it firsthand. The result is a great deal of frustration, and no deal.