We picked up our 2023 Wind Chill Pearl XSE This Saturday, Feb 18th. Purchased at MSRP with no ADM, $150 Doc, no financing so no funny finance dept tricks or high cost warranties, chemicals or the like involved. It’s got Weather Package and that’s it. Had crossbars, all weather floor liners port installed both keys and FOB’s. Blackout emblems are on window sticker and on vehicle but no $ cost and I double checked that, also had an OEM ‘spider’ cargo net in the package in back and who knows where that had come from. This build was produced in December, and had been showing on the dealers website from early December on. They don’t mark them sold, which is inconvenient but the dealer said “it’s sold”. I tried to purchase an on the lot and unclaimed ‘23 Wind Chill SE with Convenience and Weather from them, but they would ONLY trade and they were at MSRP, BUT, were undervaluing our current ‘22 RAV SE by $3k - tried to purchase outright but they said “trade only”!
We’d purchased the ‘22 Rav from a local GM dealership that treated us very well, the owners have two Toyota stores, so we have gotten Tacomas from them too. Had spec’d and “ordered” a ‘23 SE in October but no allocation so no RAV. Was on a waitlist at the local store too, but same thing, no allocation for a Wind Chill SE or XSE, only Cavalry Blue and no Weather or Convenience. Seems like I’m our area (Pacific NW) there are mostly XLE and Woodland Edition Hybrids coming in, and we didn’t want either.
After doing the math on the SE vs. XSE we realized that equipped as we wanted the prices were pretty close, so XSE was a strong consideration, having the ambient lighting we had THOUGHT the ‘22 SE was going to, Softex, LED front accent lighting, homelink, roof, etc and the new updated center stack, dash screen and upgraded 2.5 Safety suite. I had sold my ‘21 lifted TRD Off Road MT outright in November at what I think was peak pricing, for almost enough to cover price of a ‘23 Solar Octane TRD Pro that we purchased last month from the local Toyota store, so when there told the sales person that I “wanted that XSE” but he reconfirmed it was “sold”…..and I stopped in and asked about it at least every week so he wouldn’t (couldn’t?) forget about me
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Fast forward to this Saturday 2/18 - he called me at about 10:30 AM as I was driving into town - said “hey what are you doing”? And then asked if I “wanted to come see about buying a ‘23 XSE Hybrid”? I was literally two blocks away so was there in front of him before he hung up. Apparently the folks who had reserved the XSE had too much negative equity due to dropping book values and couldn’t obtain financing so it became available. Needless to say I acted fast and purchased it, and today we sold the 8500 mile 2022 SE to the GM dealership - they paid us exactly what we had paid for it, so all in all it worked out very well. Also noticed that there’s been a $500 price increase since the ‘23 was built, so feel pretty fortunate there too. We had initially ordered a ‘22 XSE in fall of ‘21 before prices were announced and were surprised at the size of the price jump and when finally allocated it had Pano which we didn’t really want - the SE was inbound, had what we needed and was available, so that was the logical choice. Honestly? A lot of ‘work’ and patient persistence but happy with the outcome. Sorry for the novel - but it’s mostly all to say just to be persistent, make friends with more than one dealer - simply be straight up and straightforward with them and you never know what might happen.
We have enjoyed our first year with a Rav Hybrid, and are looking forward to many more!
