I ride my bikes. I ride a lot, I commute when the weather permits (i.e. no rain or ice), I do weekend rides and I do track days. I really love riding. So right now I’m without a sport bike (my EX500 isn’t really a sport bike) and I would really like to have a sport bike. My wife has agreed to let me shop around.
After looking around a bit I have decided it is once again between the Ducati 848 and a Kawasaki ZX-6. The new ZX-6 on paper and in reviews sounds awesome. For me its major shortcoming is that it doesn’t come in Red. Fast things should be red. However, black will work. So I made offers to four dealers in the area to buy a ZX-6. I have data on the wholesale price, shipping and holdback for the bikes so I have a pretty good idea what, in my opinion, is a fair price for OTD.
OTD means “Out The Door” – the bike, taxes, tags, title, everything. I won’t tell you the number, but I will tell you that it should only have four digits in it. To me, once you tack on the fifth digit we’re in Ducati land so why settle on a bike that everybody and their brother is going to have and go for something with style and is Italian?
So far the dealers don’t want to come down on their prices. They want all 5 digits. The deal for me was that I close a deal today (Saturday before Christmas) or I wait until the end of February before I start looking around again. I generally do exactly what I say I’m going to do; so if I get a call on Monday I won’t be taking a deal. That window closed.
I’m also gaming the system a bit. Because in March when this start over I won’t be willing to offer as much. I’ll have more cash and another lucrative contract. I’m betting they won’t be making the numbers and will be looking to unload inventory. At which point my current offer will look really attractive. Too bad it will be the old expired offer. Meet the new offer.