<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wayne Byrom:
I wished Dodge would have just told everyone that if first time buyers get a certificate and they dont want the car, then make it available to at least Viper owners (VCA members)even if they didn't but their Viper new. Doesn't owning a Viper have ANY meaning even if were are not the first owner. So I guess in order to be special to Dodge you have to be the first owner of a Viper to qualify for a certificate and they you have to go out and chase a 2003 and pay way over sticker. So where is it we have a chance to purchase the 03 for a fair price.
Wayne, from what I have heard the owners with a certificate all bought their cars at around dealer invoice, hell the dealers cut each others throat so bad they where practically giving the cars away, so in that respect the program worked perfectly. The owners where the only ones allowed to buy SRTs, and the ones that bought, all got a race horse deal, and now have a chance to make some coin. It sound like sour grapes to me.
George... Thanks Man! that's the best offer today!
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I've posted it before. "The Coupon program put 100% of the power in the buyers hands.... dealers had no choice. If they wanted to sell a 2003, they had to meet the price of the dealer(s) offering the lowest price, dealer(s) that had sold maybe one Viper in the last ten years (except for those that did the same thing for the '96 GTS's). In this case, the program worked just like the '96 GTS did, except that (in my opinion) there were many more buyers that bought simply to resell this time around. Program would have been more fair to the dealers if they had factored in the dealers Viper allotment into things. As it was, the top dealers like Woodhouse, Fitzgerald, Buhler, Latham... all who had earned substantial Viper allotments by selling lots of Vipers.... lost those allotments, and therefor were on equal footing (liberal usage of the word "equal") with Dodge Dealers that sold hardly any Vipers. Woodhouse took the lead on pricing, at MSRP, before the coupon program was announced. Since they had the biggest allotment, dealer pricing at teh other dealers would not have been inthe "gouging" catagory like in '92 (plus MANY more cars than '92). As it ended up, the newest, hottest Dodge ever.... was forced to be sold at heavily discounted prices. Not a marketing statement you want to make on anew car.
Don't worry, we'll likely never see another program like this again. If we dom it will be a lease program like Ferrari uses to avoid gouging by dealers and buyers!
The thing that has made me laugh the most, is the fellows that bad mouthed the cars looks about six months ago, you know who you are
, nearly all have SRT-10's on order. Guess since they hate the way they look, theirs will be for sale soon too.
That's my 2 cents worth.
