What's the deal with Interest?

I think you know the answer to that one.

The money you would have made in interest is far less than the premium you'd have to pay to buy an Elise right now if you wanted to.

I think it's the dealer's free money. When you car comes in, you'll get your deposit back or it's applied to your car, but definitely not with the interest.

I think the deposit also helps the dealer purchase the car, which is probably why some dealers want a $3,000 to $5,000 deposit (Galpin in CA?) before they get invoiced for the car.

Allan Gibbs said:

I think the deposit also helps the dealer purchase the car, which is probably why some dealers want a $3,000 to $5,000 deposit (Galpin in CA?) before they get invoiced for the car.

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Heck, most dealers probably have 4 or 5 elises paid for in deposits.

you get nothing. But don't worry, you didn't give up anything.

interest rates at a bank are around 1%. For your $1K deposit you would have earned $7.50

Just don't buy the undercoating and you come out ahead!

Galpin is $3000 down for the deposite, and another $7000 upon ordering.

But, it's the dealer free money.

I don't consider it a problem as I'm not expecting to get rich off the interest of $3000. At worst, I miss out on a cheese burger at McDonalds. Which is a good thing

I think it's much more significant than that, not per person, but as a whole. If Symbolic takes $2000 from about 250 people who want to waitlist, they're sitting on a cool half-million bucks in cash.

That's enough to put a few Lambo's in inventory or just sit back and collect meager cash interest. Even at 2%, that's $10,000 a month for doing nothing.

I could digress about how maybe that would pay for someone to call customers with updates, but...

Ground Loop said:

Even at 2%, that's $10,000 a month for doing nothing.

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that would be $10,000 for the year, not per month.

Ahh, right you are atyclb!

Now I remember why I'm not a banker, loan shark, or out of debt...

For me, there's a direct link between the deposit and a stock I later sold. It was the only stock I was holding at the time back around April and I didn't want to sell it because it was underperforming for the long time I held it and I felt it should have been outperforming (AAPL). It was sell the stock or take back the deposit. As of close today, I would have had around $800 more if I'd taken the deposit back instead of selling the stock. Worse, I have yet to use the money from the stock for what it was intended - buying a house. Compounding that, whether I get an Elise completely depends on the house I end up buying. So to sum up - CRAP!

Ascot only charged me a $500 refundable deposit....and they told me to come on down to drive it after I told them I wanted to order one....overall a great experience so far

Unless you got the dealer to put it in writing that you will receive the interest, the money belongs to the dealer.