Nebraska Subaru Car Dealers

We were shopping for another car and test drove a 2011 Outback Limited. The price before taxes etc was 27,937. It has packages BDF. The sticker was 31,208. The USAA/ZAGs price was 28,350 (approximately). I dealt with Aaron. My wife called around and another Subaru dealer was going to try to beat it but I told them thanks but no thanks as I felt Aaron had done the work and it seemed like they would beat it by $100 +/- a little. This did not seem to be worth the effort. It was helpful to find this website so I could anticipate the price a little. Honestly I did not have to do any negotiating I explained to Aaron that I would buy it if he gave me his best price. I did tell him that I would probably buy about $1,000 worth of options and I would pay list for those. But I didn't finance as my 4Runner was totaled last week. I hope this helps someone else.

Sooooo I'm getting different opinions here on advertising fee's. Bigfrank said he saw the fee on his invoice which I thought comes from the manufacturer. How can a dealer fudge a fee onto a factory invoice djhalptert? Can anyone else out there let me know if this fee is in fact a real fee from the manufacturer or an added on fee by the Dealer? And yes..we all know that Ernie Boch Jr. makes a few $$ on every Subaru sold in the NE....Like he needs the money!!

The adv. fee we pay here in NE is for the Boch commercials for NE Subaru, but given that, the adv. fee on the invoice for my 10 Forester was $436. This was 2% of the invoice price.

I'd be interested in these numbers too. I'm not in NE, but I'd like to see the national numbers. Of course, the numbers are going on change on the 1st, so it may not really matter. Thanks

Hi Ridge8. Glad to share. Remember that the name of the game in the car business is volume. Dealers don't mind selling SOME vehicles with no profit as long as they don't lose money. Whether it is a VIP deal where they get reimbursed for their "trouble" or selling a vehicle that has not been floorplanned yet, such as an ordered vehicle, it helps get their volume up. This allows the dealer to get more support money and more vehicles to sell in the future. A General Manager friend of mine always told me he didn't mind selling to me at cost (ordered vehicles) because he would make it up on the "next guy", and mine were easy sales, tying up no one but me and him. He always said the volume was much more important to him because it gave him better status which allowed him to have a higher priority on getting stock to sell. Salespeople live off the bonus checks, again based on volume. They might get "x" for 5 sales but they also might get "3x" for 10 sales, so it is non-linear. The joke on some of my deals was that the salesperson's payment for this particular car amounted to a ham sandwich. Even then they still appreciated getting one more sale for their monthly volume quota. I am not sure that the salesperson actually gets a check from Subaru, especially in NE where it probably would be SoNE, but it is just semantics because the bonus money flows from the top and trickles down to the salesperson. Of course the dealership gets non-linear bonuses too. Again, it is all volume. Even Ernie makes more money and gets treated better with higher volume. Car manufacturing companies would be nothing without people moving their product, at all levels, so that is where the incentive is. Ernie adds nothing to the situation, he gets in the way most of the time. No one would design a system like that today, but remember, 40 years ago or so the Japanese brands wanted to get a foothold over here, BADLY. The vehicles weren't all that popular and most weren't all that good. None were built in this country, all shipped over. Even Subarus of the 70's turned to swiss cheese before your eyes. I remember years ago when my wife needed a cheap car while she was going to school, and she bought an old and well-used Subaru GL wagon. It ran very well but it was a "Flintstone" car, no floor to speak of. It was only a "car" because of all the rust holding hands. Subaru wanted to get into the US market but were having a hard time finding someone who would take a chance on them. Ernie stepped up, and for his trouble he got a lifetime exclusive contract for his enterprise, for all the NE area. It took a LOT of years before his gamble paid off, but his vision and risk-taking helped make him very wealthy today. Subaru couldn't get out of the deal even if they wanted to today. Him being in the way doesn't help you and me, but I applaud him for what he did when no one else wanted the deal. The fact that some Subarus are now built here changes the business model but has no bearing on his exclusive contract. The contract today is not for Subaru's benefit, but it was "in the beginning". Regards, Frank