How do you buy aero kit / TRD parts?
 

Hey, I'm a newbie to both the forums and to buying "special" parts- and this is probably a stupid question, but how would you order a car with the aero kit and/or TRD parts?

Would you just go up to a dealership and order from a catalog, and say you want to add certain parts, you pay without seeing the vehicle, they put it together and ship it to thee dealership you ordered it from?

From what I know of ordering parts from a Toyota dealership it's pretty much as you thought; if you have the part number you go to your local dealership and have them look-up the part to see if there are any in stock in the US and the cost, if you want said part you pay for it then (as it's a special order they can't wait until it arrives to have you pay...), and they place your order and the part is delivered to your dealership to either be installed by you or installed, for a price, by the dealership.

Another way of going about all of this is to buy the part online from one of the many Toyota dealerships that do online parts selling. Generally, this can be cheaper than going to your local dealership as they sometimes have better prices, even including shipping, than what you'd pay at your local. For example, the cost of a 2011 Yaris armrest MSRP is about 239 dollars and my local dealership charges 299 to order and install it but I can buy the armrest from Conicelli Toyota for around 80 dollars shipped. If I do the install myself I save over 200 dollars or if I pay for dealer labor, assuming a 1hr job at $85/hour, I save around 130 dollars.

This may be a tad bit more difficult with a newer, less inventoried set of parts like the FR-S/BRZ's but we won't know until we can start ordering the parts...and the cars.

In most cases when you buy a new car you are presented with a brochure which has all of the accessories that could be added to the vehicle. Like keiri pointed out they will come at a premium. Good example: In dash gps/dvd/computer thing will cost $1600 from a dealer while similar thing when bought and installed from bestbuy would cost you around $1100. Or you can stick with factory radio, buy a factory radio ipod interface and a separate gps unit like tom tom and spend less than 300 bucks.

Most aftermarket performance mods will be sold by hundreds of online vendors. Most aftermarket body styling mods will be sold by hundreds of online vendors too.

I have been a loyal customer of vis racing for body kits and summit racing/greddy/magnaflow for power mods.

Another way of getting TRD parts on the FRS is to buy a car from the showroom floor that already has them installed. Many dealerships will add on these parts so they can make a bigger profit on the car sale. Or if you are ordering the car, just tell the dealer what parts you want on it. When the car and parts come in, the dealer will install them.

What's the benefit of paying "more" for the dealership to add an aero package? Factory paint, warranty, no fitment issues, poor installation or paint matching problems. Also for many people it's the only way to afford it - since you can roll that in to the car loan. Ie a $2,500 kit is suddenly only $45/month.

I have to caution you, however... you are not paying 45/mo... you are paying compounding interest on your loan.

In other words $2500 kit will suddenly cost substantially more over time.

Most car loans are simple interest instead of compound interest loans however I agree that you should never build anything extra into the car loan if you could just save the money and buy it later in cash.

Er - that would be reverse compounding interest since you are paying the loan off. The loan balance never goes up and any extra payments are taken off the end at a compounded rate. But I digress. It's simple interest for the loan calc. Based on your interest rate (say 5%) over 5 years, you're paying roughly 5x5%/2 (5 years at 5% at the average loan balance). So 12.5% in interest on initial price. If it's a $2,500 kit, that's about $300 in interest, so $2,800 spread over 60 payments, or roughly $45/month. (give or take).

Your payment is increased by about $5/month due to the interest. Otherwise if you have cash for the $2,500, you can just pay it out of pocket.

In comparison, if you order the kit online using a credit card and take a year to pay it off, at normal 20% credit card rates, you would have paid $250 in interest in just one year, assuming you make monthly payments. Otherwise if you just pay $20/month and then the full balance one year later, you would have paid $500 in interest.

Rolling it in to a car loan makes sense if you don't have the cash all at once.

many aftermarket parts will not come pre painted so you may not get "factory paint" although the dealer may be able to do a better job matching the color than an ordinary body/paint shop. Also, most of the time the fitment of the kit won't be warrantied. If it is falling off that would be covered but a gap between the body and aero piece wouldn't be fixed. That actually happens a lot in colder climates since most of those aero pieces are held tight to the body with double sided tape.

I have been using VIS racing fiberglass kits for years. Most difficult part of doing it yourself is not researching and not doing grunt work that goes into making kits look perfect.

Maaco can fit your body kit and paint it for about $2,000. Or they can factory match color and give you painted pieces for about $500. Maaco of course is not the best but its cheapest so you have to make that decision. So if you fit the kit yourself (not easy if its your first time) and you trim it to fit (definitely not easy if its your first time) then you can order and install entire thing for under $1000 which is very much doable.

When I was in college I would save up for 3 months or so and buy parts I needed, fit, trim, give to maaco and install back on car. I think only part that did not require painting was my carbon fiber hood.

Which brings me to another point. You can actually order "better fit" kits that cost more and they will come pre-drilled. I was very surprised that after installing body kits for quite a few kids in college to see that pre-drilled kits are not that far off.

Painting is of course not required if you do body wraps or do a carbon fiber 3m wrap around parts you are installing... but a painted car looks much more presentable so its another decision that you would have to make.

We had this one kid in our celica club that reverse engineered a body kit by molding against his original stock bumper. Big kudos to the guy as final product came out looking quite nice.

fiberglass parts tends to crack, break easy and do not take punishment well. With proper care your kit could last you 5-10 years easy.

Well he's talking about the TRD kits, which should come prepainted.

So does the price for an aero kit on scion.com for say a tc include installation? Like if I build my fr-s on scion.com and add the aero kit while I build it will the car show up at the dealer with the kit already on it or will they charge me more to install it at the dealership?

I never understood why they have that "build your own". I was under the impression that what is at the dealership is what you get. They can from there just order and add on parts from the factory. My experience when looking at scion and other toyotas i was always told "This doesn't have "that" but we can add it. We just have to order it."

Build your own car implies just that... build your own car.

You go online and make it "your way". Then you visit the dealer and pay the price and few weeks later your get your car delivered to your doorstep or dealership for pickup exactly how you ordered it.

If you buy a car off the lot and would like to accessorize it then you would obviously have to pay parts+labor. If they do not have all the parts in stock then you will have to come back.

I'm not positive about scion, but all the trd parts offered at my local Toyota dealership have always been dealer accessories only. You could not order a car with them from the factory, you could order them with a car and they would be installed by the dealer before you take delivery. This is the same as any spt or sti parts from Subaru.