who said the car was free?

you’re just not paying interest

During covid my coworker for a 0% interest loan on a 2016 4runner TRD pro. It was for 80k.

Dudes chilling, taking his time to pay it off, saving for a house.

They exist, I just don't know how he pulled it off.

Every once in a while there are multiple parties structuring a deal where someone is left with a bad deal when it's all said and done. As a consumer, you just have to make sure it's not you.

But take, for example, the early days of Moviepass. You pay a cheap subscription to a service, and they buy you unlimited mobile tickets at the theater. Too good to be true in the long term, but in the short term it was a good way to spend some money that venture capitalists were giving away basically for free.

Businesses aren't always smart. Sometimes they make financial mistakes and it's your duty as a responsible consumer to punish those businesses for those mistakes.

In the case of dealer/manufacturer/financing incentives and the individual salesman commission, sometimes the kickback/fee scheme leaves someone else holding the bag. If you can negotiate a lower sticker price because it comes with some predatory terms on financing, but there's no penalty for prepayment, it might make the most sense to take the low sticker price (made possible by the lender paying the dealer a kickback for the loans), finance at high rates, and then pay the whole thing off as soon as you can, so that you get the "discount" without having to pay high interest/fees, then you walk away with a good deal in exchange for just a little bit more hassle and paperwork. Sometimes the incentives swing the other way, too, where the lender is affiliated with the manufacturer and needs to juice sales volume by offering below-market rates on financing. As long as you can actually see how everything works and you can find the pain point, it may be possible to get a good deal and dump the bad deal on some faceless corporation for them to worry about.

they’re definitely making less margin and there are plenty of loss lead situations or outside pressures in the short term

you can see what the car was selling for prior months so  I’m not sure how much you think it could be increased without it being obvious? (steam sales come to mind)

better argument would be how much they think they’d lose not selling current inventory and what you could potentially haggle the price down to vs you don’t for this deal but that’s insider info I would not have

and I did haggle that some as well anyway

beyond that, if i was that price sensitive, i would not be buying new

but i’ve seen so many people chase a better deal into future problems

Yeah, now don't get me wrong, you can get some deals on cars when dealers see the lot space as increasingly valuable compared to the car on it, but they're salespeople, they'll swear up and down that that's the case no matter what the situation is.

You want to know how you can tell you got a good deal? You compare it to what similar vehicles are being sold for at other places, you have an independent mechanic check it out (an honest dealer will be perfectly happy with you doing that), and you ask a trusted financial institution (ideally a credit union) what they would loan you for it. In general you trust that everything a car salesperson is doing that sounds good is to keep your eyes on the hand that isn't in your pocket.

where is this world of perfect information you have about car prices?

far as i know i paid under regional prices on the average before even the no interest

but if you have a source i’ll take it