ACTUAL purchases of '15 USED (buyback) TDIs

I contacted one of my nearby VW dealers about this and received a response that was somewhat discouraging. Quoting her email:

[SIZE=+0]Volkswagen does have a site for dealers that list the TDI vehicles available for resale but it only list inventory by increment meaning they do not list the full inventory and they only list a certain amount on their site. After a few of the TDI are sold to dealers then they will update the site with newer inventory.[/SIZE]

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She also noted:

[SIZE=+0]Our Pre-Owned Sales Manager does check the website regulary and he has not seen a Passat TDI with Manual Transmission listed their for awhile. [/SIZE]

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Not what I wanted to hear. Looking nationwide I see some out there but none nearby. The closest that meets my preferences is in Sanford, FL over 750 miles away.

Dave

As mentioned above, cars.com is a pretty good resource. Edmunds.com is not bad as well.

Last year, it took me several weeks to find exactly what I was looking for (a Toffee Brown 2015 Beetle Convertible 6M), but I did find it eventually. Of course I had to fly from Utah to DC to get it and drive it home (which for me was a blast!).

If you have a lot of time and patience, you’ll eventually find what you’re looking for. I’d imagine if you keep a little “gentle pressure” on your favorite dealership, they might come through for you, but there’s always going to be that dance of Desired Features, Distance and Price.

Good luck with your quest! [emoji846]


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I used cars.com daily. Once I was tired of looking I went after one. Really pleased with it. 700 miles away but worth the drive. Those manual passats are tough to find and my local dealers didn't seem interested in locating one for me either. If you have lots of patience you'll find one. Vw is selling a bunch of these things weekly. Mostly auto trans jetta and passat. Good luck

rams2500 said:

I used cars.com daily. Once I was tired of looking I went after one. Really pleased with it. 700 miles away but worth the drive. Those manual passats are tough to find and my local dealers didn't seem interested in locating one for me either. If you have lots of patience you'll find one. Vw is selling a bunch of these things weekly. Mostly auto trans jetta and passat. Good luck

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I have been using the AAA/ACA car buying arrangement with Truecars. Is cars.com any better with the identification of manual transmissions versus DSG? I have found that over half of those listed as manual there upon inspection of the pictures in the listing prove to be DSG! This makes screening the listings take a fair bit longer and there is no way to consider those that have not posted pictures showing the shifter.

Dave

There are two manual transmission Passats on the VW auction site right now. One in MN, one in IL. The MN one has a fair amount of minor body damage but only 54K on it. The IL one has 102K on it but is cleaner. Both are black.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

There are two manual transmission Passats on the VW auction site right now. One in MN, one in IL. The MN one has a fair amount of minor body damage but only 54K on it. The IL one has 102K on it but is cleaner. Both are black.

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Not my choice in color and the one is obviously not eligible for CPO. Still I am glad to hear there are some listed today.

Another thought, do VW dealers have any way to cooperate on a sale? I see a car that looks ideal down in Florida, but as I am in Maryland that is quite a trip and leaves the issue of local tags, title and taxes. If a local VW dealer could handle those issues for me and have the car shipped it might be worth paying them for their effort and avoiding the need to do so myself.

Dave

VW is shipping these cars all over the country. They can buy a car for you anywhere in the US and have it shipped to them for refurbishing and the emissions updates. If it has to come from far away you may incur a shipping charge or it may affect the price, but that probably isn't a big deal for the right car. I'd befriend a salesperson or manager at a dealer you like and check in with him or her daily to see what's on the site.

Things are kind of lean right now, it seems, perhaps because of the weather. They have to photo the cars pretty extensively and may not have wanted to do that in some parts of the country last week. But I think if you're persistent and willing to pay a reasonable price you'll find what you want.

My dealer had a '15 Manual at the holidays (Titan Silver/Black) with 54K on it. CPO. Nice car. I was tempted but have no earthly use for it.

Well, I expressed my interest to the Florida dealer about the car. It is a single-owner, North Carolina CPO car with only 25k miles on it and a clean CarFax. The car is Platinum Grey Metalic with Moonrock Grey interior. I am exchanging emails with them and we will see where this goes.

Dave

Does the dealer in FL have the car? If not, your local dealer may be able to snag it.

Dave_D said:

Well, I expressed my interest to the Florida dealer about the car. It is a single-owner, North Carolina CPO car with only 25k miles on it and a clean CarFax. The car is Platinum Grey Metalic with Moonrock Grey interior. I am exchanging emails with them and we will see where this goes.

Dave

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When I purchased my 2011 JSW TDI down in Houston this weekend, the dealer said that people these days are flying in from all over the country for the right vehicle and just driving them back home.

The car I bought only had 26K miles on it, absolutely no damage on it and the paint was fresh. Basically, the previous owner kept it garaged and didn't drive it all that much.

The possibility of finding another one of these 2011 JSW TDI's in this condition with this low mileage is about as good as Brady not winning another SB.

The only other JSW TDI in the state of Texas with 26K miles on it was absolutely trashed when I test drove it in San Antonio a few weeks ago.

The previous owner is key to all of these deals.......

IndigoBlueWagon said:

Does the dealer in FL have the car? If not, your local dealer may be able to snag it.

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It is listed on their website and shown as theirs in both truecar.com and cars.com, so I can only conclude they have it on hand. The first email I received was asking me to schedule a test drive as well.

So I am waiting to hear further from them after clarifying the situation. We will see if this goes anywhere or not.

Dave

I used car-gurus to find the two that were eventually bought.

When I was doing this in 2015 for the eGolf, I had multiple dealerships offering to ship the car from the top of the state to the bottom for around $5-700 bucks. I also had a dealership willing to send it straight to my house on a trailer, with a salesperson riding in the cab, paperwork ready for my signature in hand. What we eventually ended up doing was getting the car fully charged, taking it for the full range, staying the night a friend's house, charging it over night at the nearest dealer to our home, driving to the top of the mountain and then gritting our teeth while coasting home into our driveway without about 2 miles left

The point is depending on who you're working with they can have either very much or very little motivation to get the car into your hands but there are a million options for doing so.

A mechanic at Burdick VW in North Syracuse, NY informed me that they just bought 300 TDIs to be fixed. I don't know if that's accurate, but anyone shopping around may want to give them a call.

roni024 said:

A mechanic at Burdick VW in North Syracuse, NY informed me that they just bought 300 TDIs to be fixed. I don't know if that's accurate, but anyone shopping around may want to give them a call.

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Sounds interesting. If my current choice falls through I will check with them.

Dave

i purchased my 2015 golf SEL, 6 speed with lighting package, 21k miles for 13,000 + auction fees and transport. sold by VWOA post fix.

roni024 said:

A mechanic at Burdick VW in North Syracuse, NY informed me that they just bought 300 TDIs to be fixed. I don't know if that's accurate, but anyone shopping around may want to give them a call.

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Sure, but how many are low mileage and in perfect condition?

There's a market for these, but I've found that VW buyers are picky creatures.

I don't think they bought 300 all at once. Maybe they've bought a total of that many, or plan to. VW is only releasing these in limited numbers.

Mileage and condition varies...a lot. There don't seem to be many pristine cars out there. But there are some.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

There don't seem to be many pristine cars out there. But there are some.

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if you have access to the VW auction, there are some cream puffs for sure. unfortunately, when they get into the dealers hands, you never know what you are getting.

i have no problem posting the auction runs and letting people know who bought them if they were interested in chasing them down to the dealer, but you would cringe at the auction sale price vs dealer retail price.

Is that US data only, or is there CDN data available too?

sootchucker said:

i have no problem posting the auction runs and letting people know who bought them if they were interested in chasing them down to the dealer, but you would cringe at the auction sale price vs dealer retail price.

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That would be great if you posted that information. Valuable to those of us looking to buy...thanks.

I'm not sure how helpful it would actually be in practical terms, but it's interesting to gawk at the difference between price paid and price selling. The market price is going to lie somewhere in between the lowest they're willing the accept and the highest you're willing to pay. There's a certain limit to how much you can get knocked off the sticker regardless of the car costing the dealer $10 bucks.

If you don't buy it, someone else will, until someone doesn't, and then they'll lower it. I don't see how being armed with the knowledge that the car you're haggling over cost someone $3000 dollars at one time will give you any appreciable leverage on getting it down from $10K to $6k. At a certain point they'll just tell you to kick rocks and that point will be right where you draw a line between what you will and won't pay.

And overall dealership margins are fine but not exactly setting the world on fire. Somebody has to pay for those staff, and that big building, and goodwill repairs. They are pretty similar to other overall retail margins once everything is accounted for.

roni024 said:

A mechanic at Burdick VW in North Syracuse, NY informed me that they just bought 300 TDIs to be fixed. I don't know if that's accurate, but anyone shopping around may want to give them a call.

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I just got an email from Burdick. They now have over 200 TDIs for sale. Anyone looking, give them a call.

Looking at their web site shows 163 and over 140 are the old 2011-2013. Only 3 2015's and only 18 certified. But 50 of them are under $10k.

And only 20 with manual transmissions.

Interestingly enough, it appears that someone at my local dealer paid attention to my preferences and they now have on their lot a 2015 Passat SE TDI six speed manual in grey with grey interior, no sun roof and 72K on the odometer. They have yet to do the fix on it and prep it for sale. I hope it will qualify for a CPO warranty. Needless to say I have made them well aware of my interest in the car.

My only problem with them is the price they have attached to it. This lead me to investigate things a bit further. As my lender, AAA Banking, indicated that they use the NADA guide to determine how much they will finance I decided to use it. Going to their website I put in the particulars for this car and obtained the NADA Clean Retail for it. I was not surprised to find that the dealer was $1k over this.

This led me to investigate further what other dealers were listing similar cars for. So I went back to the AAA/ACA TrueCar search tool and located all the 2015 Passat TDIs I could find nationwide at an advertised price less than or equal to what the local dealer was asking. I found 18 of them, both SE and SEL, DSG and six speed manual, with various options. Using the NADA website I determined the Clean Retail for each of them.

Comparing the NADA Clean Retail for these 18 cars with the advertised price I found that these cars were being advertised at an average of over $3k off NADA Clean Retail or less that 79% of NADA Clean Retail.

I thought this might be of interest to those negotiating with dealers over a car.

Dave

I don't think they do CPO at 72k miles on the car. Seems like the most I have seen is in the 40k range.

Lightflyer1 said:

I don't think they do CPO at 72k miles on the car. Seems like the most I have seen is in the 40k range.

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Actually they will do one with up to 75k miles. In the case of a fixed TDI the extended emissions warranty covers much of what the CPO does, so you should be able to get one at a discounted price.

Dave

You have some good research there to support a lower offer. They still might not sell it to you at the lower price but you are giving yourself the best shot possible.

flargabarg said:

You have some good research there to support a lower offer. They still might not sell it to you at the lower price but you are giving yourself the best shot possible.

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My plan is to offer them 79% of NADA clean retail as a starter. If they want more for it, ask them to add a discounted CPO warranty. If they still want more, ask them to add free VW recommended maintenance for the warranty period. I haven't thought beyond that yet, but I'm sure I can think of more value they can add if they want more money.

Dave