Originally Posted by stevemis

After going back and forth with a local Nissan dealer (Raleigh, NC area) over the purchase price of a 2004 Titan, we finally started looking at the Dodge Hemi 1500 and negotiated a pretty good deal. To me, it doesn't really matter which truck we get, but my wife is partial to the Titan.

I was able to take the brochure and our negotiated price on the Dodge back to the Nissan dealer, who came pretty close price-wise on Saturday afternoon. The negotiated price on the Dodge was $27,562 + 298 Doc Fee.

The Dodge we priced out was about $7,000 under MSRP, partially due to a $3,000 factory rebate and the fact that the new models are about to appear. This particular truck was an SLT 4 door, 4 wheel drive Hemi with the Off Road package.

The Nissan folks looked at the brochure, tried to talk us into the Titan at close-to-sticker by repeatedly slamming Dodge trucks.. when I interrupted and said, in my eyes, the two trucks are basically identical - at least as far as our needs go. They each have their negatives and positives, but in the end it's all a wash.

Dealers hate it when you do this to them.

After some squirming, they finally came down to $27,000 on a 4 wheel drive SE with Big Tow and King Cab with the Popular Package. The Nissan dealer MSRP sticker claimed $30,060. Doc fees were within $1 between the Dodge and Nissan dealers.

Next came the loan process, and we were quite displeased with their interest rate of 6.99% for 60 months. We ended up leaving because we aren't really "ready" quite yet, but would have jumped at the right opportunity. Because we thought the truck purchase would be several months away, we hadn't even looked at financing on our own yet.

I'm under the impression they found 4% or maybe 5% and tacked on a couple of points as profit. We recently bought a boat and the loan guy made the mistake of saying "that's how they do it".. I gave him a look and magically the rate dropped 1%, which was pretty inline with other boat loans.

Anyway, we came home and hit LendingTree and it looks like 4.75% through CitiBank is our best offer thus far. I'm not entirely sure if the $27,000 price will hold with outside financing, but there are other Nissan dealers in the area and the Dodge dealer is drooling to do business.

How do you think we're doing so far?

-Steve