re saturn s pricing policy in article c vir l r shuksan ds boeing com fredd shuksan fred dickey writes carolinafan uiuc cka uxa cso uiuc edu wrote i have been active in defending saturn lately on the net and would like to state my full opinion on the subject rather than just reply to others points the biggest problem some people seem to be having is that saturn dealers make k on a car i think most will agree with me that the car is comparably priced with its competitors that is they aren t overpriced compared to most cars in their class i don t understand the point of arguing over whether the dealer makes the k or not i have never understood what the big deal over dealer profits is either the only thing that i can figure out is that people believe that if they minimize the dealer profit they will minimize their total out of pocket expenses for the car while this may be true in some cases i do not believe that it is generally true i bought a saturn sl in january of at that time based on studying car prices i decided that there was no comparable car that was priced as cheaply as the saturn sure maybe i could have talked the price for some other car to the saturn price but my out of pocket expenses wouldn t have been any different what s important to me is how much money i have left after i buy the car reducing dealer profit is not the same thing as saving money show me how reducing dealer profit saves me money and i ll believe that it s important my experience has been that reducing dealer profit does not necessarily save me money fred say you bought your saturn at k with a dealer profit of k if the dealer profit is then you would only be paying k for the same car so isn t that saving money moreover if saturn really does reduce the dealer profit margin by then their cars will be even better deals say if the price of a saturn was already below market average for the class of cars then after they reduce the dealer profit it would be below market average it will attract even more people to buy saturns because it would save them money force the competitors to lower their prices to survive now not only will saturn owners benefit from a lower dealer profit even the buyers for other cars will pay less isn t that saving money doug
