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Truecar

  • TrueCar is an information and technology platform that enables its users to communicate with TrueCar Certified Dealers for a great car buying experience. Their mission is simple: make the car buying process simple, fair and fun. Achieving this goal begins with TrueCar analyzing the most accurate, timely and comprehensive pricing information available and then making it easy to understand and available to all; free of charge. This kind of pricing information, which has only recently become available, will allow you to recognize a fair price based on what others actually paid. The result: consumers and dealers now have a guide that helps them establish a baseline of trust and agree on the parameters of a fair deal.

    They have partnered with a national network of more than 13,000 dealers (representing about 35% of all franchised dealers) who share the belief that truth, transparency and fairness are the foundation of a great car buying experience.

  • The TrueCar Price Report shows you what you can expect to pay on average for new cars in your area, based on what other people actually paid for their cars. They do all this so you’ll be confident in your car purchase. Harness the power of this information, recognize a fair deal, and essentially become a car buying expert.

  • Dealers generally will do their best to match the vehicle you have configured on TrueCar, but many times they will not have an exact match for the car you are looking to purchase. This is not the dealer’s fault, but rather a challenge with the way cars and trucks are manufactured and marketed. While some vehicles are produced in large numbers, other vehicles are produced in smaller numbers. To further complicate things, many options or colors will be produced in even more limited combinations. This creates a great deal of confusion for buyers that want a very specific configuration. Ultimately this can affect your expectations when contacting a dealer, so it may be helpful to keep an open mind about what the dealer may be offering as an alternative.

  • You can visit the TrueCar company blog. Click here to read it for yourself.

  • TrueCar obtains and processes data from well-known data aggregators within the automotive space to ensure that they present the most accurate pricing information available. They also acquire vehicle configuration data, customer and dealer incentives data, financing and loan data, vehicle registration and insurance data, and much, much more. Their data is among the most timely and comprehensive in the industry. TrueCar’s sampling of the total number of car sales nationwide provides them with significant confidence that their data is representative of the market as a whole. Statistical analysis shows that on the whole, they have 99.1% confidence that their projected Average Paid Price per new car sale in a given week is within $20 of the average price of all nationwide sales transactions during that week. However, please keep in mind that this is the average for all vehicles. If you are evaluating the average price for any specific vehicle (particularly one with very low sales volume), the deviation from the national average for that vehicle can be substantially greater.

  • Their pricing information is updated weekly, and incentives are checked daily and updated as new information is validated. The transactions they use are the most recent available. TrueCar typically pushes data out to the site within 72 hours of receipt of the data. To ensure relevance, they typically only use transactions from the last four weeks, but will go back as far as 8 weeks if the market pricing for a given vehicle is stable enough to be relevant to a car purchased today.

  • At TrueCar, they are committed to keeping their data up-to-date and accurate. When a vehicle has a very small history of recent purchases, it’s difficult to provide reliable price ranges. In those cases, they believe that not showing a Price Report is a better approach than suggesting or making an interpretation of the price.

  • Often, manufacturers charge the dealer not only a Destination Charge, but also some additional fees such as extra freight fees, admin fees, fuel charges, and the most typical of all, Regional Ad Fees. Regional Ad Fees is the cost a manufacturer allocates for advertising and promoting the vehicle in the dealer’s market. For example, all Toyota dealers pay Regional Ad Fees. These extra fees, like Destination Charges, are a legitimate cost to the dealer and should be added to the Factory Invoice. As a matter of fact, many dealers won’t call it out but simply make them part of the Factory Invoice (which could make you believe the dealer is artificially inflating the price, especially when comparing the Factory Invoice found on other web sites). TrueCar includes these Regional Ad Fees and other extra fees, and the curious minds can always see the precise breakdown in our Table tab. This is, however, not a catch all. Taxes, title, license, registration, dealer documentation, after-market accessories, dealer installed options, etc. are costs added by the dealer (instead of the manufacturer) and are as such not part of the Factory Invoice. For more information, please check out the blog article, What is Included in Factory Invoice?

  • The TrueCar Price Estimate shown on the Certificate includes the destination fee and the regional advertising fee. The TrueCar Price Estimate does not include the charges listed in the previous paragraph, nor other state and governmental charges and/or fees, dealer-locate fees for out-of-stock vehicles, and any other charges and/or fees allowed by law.

  • Absolutely. After you enter your ZIP code, TrueCar’s system identifies incentives applicable in your area.