Ohio Cadillac Car Dealers

Gee, nothing here for over 2 years. Wow I guess STS buyers are too busy for this forum (or too rich to care). Well, I'm neither, and I have liked the STS ever since it went to RWD in 2004. But the price scared the bejezzus out of me, especially the NorthStar V8 equipped ones ($56,000 MSRP with no options!). After all I couldn't very well get an STS with the SAME engine as my wife's CTS, that would not do. She would have a lighter car with the same power. No sirree for me it would be a NorthStar or bust. Plus I had a nice Eldorado Convertible with a NorthStar and even though it was FWD, it still rocketed down the road and got great gas mileage when i wasn't stomping on it. Fast forward a few years to Nov 2011. Wife has a very nice AWD 2008 CTS premium with Chrome CTS 18" wheels. The Eldorado is gone, victim of a crash that got it total lossed. I replaced it with a 1996 Fleetwood (LAST one made, with only 70,000 miles when i bought it in Feb), because i needed a car to tow our boat (I don't do trucks). But I put 15,000 miles on the Fleetwood in 6 months, so i decided to look for a NorthStar equipped STS. I found out that 2011 was the last year and 2010 was the last year for NorthStars, so i decided that a 2008-2010 would be in order. CPO only, and that cut out most of the 2008s since Nov 2011 made most 2008s already 4 years old, but there were a few. Being very particular on colors, i passed on three 2008s, and a couple 2010s because of color, age, carfax 'issues' and the fact that some cars I found in edmunds-auto-trader were not at Cadillac dealers (thus not CPO). I finally narrowed it down to 3 2009, 2 silver and 1 black, all 150-250 miles away, and none with the ventilated seats. It seems that Avis was a large STS fleet buyer and these were all coming off rental use, but were still CPO eligible. They were all identically equipped, making comparisons easier. Then i saw what looked to be an early posting on a 4th one. This one looked it had the 18" wheels and they looked chrome, but no info and the dealer, which i planned to go see the following week for one of the Avis cars said he didn't have a second silver 2009 STS. I refused to put a deposit down, because another dealer had a black one with the grey interior and these two looked like beige interiors. But i promised to call the day before i went there. Sure enough they still had it and the sales rep mentioned that they had another one , the silver one that i saw that he said a week earlier that he didn't have. I guess it was in the back in service, etc. He sand that one would be more, a lot more, because it had this that and the other option. I told him I'd look at both. It took forever to drive from Orlando to Coral Cadillac in Pompano that afternoon, but i finally got there, and they rolled out the more expensive one that i asked for. Well it turns out that this car was a Platinum edition, which required that that the car has the $11,000 super option package. Both of these options were not allowed on any fleet orders, making them quite rare. The Platinum package was another $6,500, and the total original MSRP topped out at $75,610 Of course that was 3 years & 10 months ago and the STS seems to take a $10,000 hit each year or more in resale value. Platinum ed came with chrome wheels, all leather interior, suede (alacantra) headlings and sunshades, and that fancy stitching that everyone loves about the CTS (I have a 2008 CTS for my wife). Plus that 11,000 option package has every piece of electrionic frippery known to man. so it's better equipped than the best equipped CTS or DTS for that matter, and aside from the V series it was the flagship of the line in 2009 - 2010. The only options it does not have are the engine block heater (I'm in FL!!!), AWD - which after driving the AWD CTS for a year we don't like, and that fancy pearl / chromoflair paint . The silver is just fine. Since I'm a sucker for chrome wheels (we now have 3 cars with chrome wheels!), i offered $33,500 plus tax and state license costs. With no trade i had to pay the entire sales tax (ouch). but i qualified for Ally 0.9% APR financing so i took 3 years on the financed amount at that rate. The sales rep took my offer without even blinking so i asked him later, how much they made off the deal. He said approx 1500, which is ok by me, especially since he offered to (and did) pay for my rental car drop off and gas to get there, etc. Oh yeah, the car only had 11,000 miles on it and it was CPO meaning Dec 2014 warranty expiration with 90,000 miles for me to drive all over creation with! ;) It appears that Edmunds TMV is still showing what most of us users (and several mods) think are too high values. even so, I think i made a good deal. For example tright now TMV on this car shows 37,100 dealer retail and 40,300 CPO. That's too high, and it was not what i paid. What do you all think?? To me it appears that New STS buyers take a SEVERE hit on depreciation, but 2-3 year old ones make a GREAT value to those of us who understand what these care are, especially the platinum edition ones, which represented the very best GM had to offer in 2009-2010. It's probably no wonder they took it out of the line after 2011. Only issue the past 2 months is the adaptive cruise control not adapting - or doing anything for that matter, but we'll get that fixed. Did i mention chrome wheels? I love chrome wheels :D

>Hi Damon. General Motors regular consumer cash incentives cannot be used >on leases through Ally, US Bank, or GM Financial. > >Ally's current base lease rate and residual value for a 36 month lease of a 2011 >CTS-V Sedan with 10,000 miles per year are 1.15% and 46%, respectively. > >General Motors July incentives are scheduled to run through September 6th > >Car_man Car_Man, Thanks for the quick reply. The comment on the cash not being used on leases is curious. Since technically, since GMAC isn't doing the lease, I "buying" the car and using another institution to finance it (likely US Bank since I've done a lot of business with them). So I don't see how or why they'd care, since it's technically a buy - how or where I use that cash back is up to me (Ford for example, not only has a lease incentive for outside leasing of $1500 and they let you keep the cash back as though they were leasing. Kind of makes sense why GM as whole is in the hole... particularly on a vehicle most are likely to lease (CTS-V). The customer base for that type of vehicle or cars in that price range are generally lease candidates for it's consumer base which tends to lease wanting a new car every 2-3 years -- and you'd think they'd want to make it as attractive as possible given it's rather poor residual. Oh well, something to consider. On a side note, I'm also going to be picking up a 2012 Mustang GT (brembo pkg) to replace the 2011 I had. Do you happen to know what US Bank's current program is on the car? I know back in May on a 36/mo, 12K mile/yr it was 64% residual and .00182 MF. Has that changed or maybe gotten better (no likely , lol). thanks again, I appreciate the help. Best, damon

Oh, OTD I ment "out the door" - total of money that you give the day you get the car. :)

paperboyccc, Apparently, you showed only the summary page as I didn't see any input for sales tax (i.e., 8.75%) and, accordingly, never considered taxes. "$742.29 who knows??" That's why you need to get an itemization from the dealer. "Can't they use the $7442.36 in such a way that it doesn't result in that $651 in extra taxes? " Nope. Whether they use the amount to reduce the capcost or use it to cover the upfront fees, you're going to pay tax. Also, I do not advise making a down payment (i.e., cap reduction). A car is a depreciating asset purchased for consumption; and so, it's an expense and not an investment. No savvy investor would ever invest in stock that they know will depreciate or lose value over time. Also, if the vehicle is totalled or stolen, and never recovered, you risk losing part or all of your down payment. I suggest that you use the rebate, if possible, to offset the upfront lease charges and take the balance in cash. My guess is that they won't let you do this and so, the balance will likely have to be applied toward reducing the gross cap. Oh well. John

A reporter is looking to speak to consumers who recently leased a GM or Chrysler vehicle in the past two months . Please send your daytime phone number to ctalati@edmunds.com by Thursday, October 8, 2009.