By cash rebate i mean the rebate that mazda offers if you don’t use their financing (if you pay “cash”) that rebate is set by mazda. It is not a deal that this particular dealer is offering you.
so if you negatiate 2000$ of the car with the dealer, and then decide to pay cash instead of financing, then that “cash rebate” would be added on top of the 2000$ discount you negotiated with the dealer. If you go build your car online, you can see what that “cash rebate” would amount to. The dealer doesn’t have a choice in that matter.
Is going for the cash rebate just moving the $ sign from a column to another and resulting in the same total at the end? Maybe, it depends on the specific situations, sometimes it is cheaper, sometime it is the same and sometime it could be more expensive. You have to run the math, in my case for 2 cars purchased 8 years appart, the cash rebate saved me money on both, even though i financed the car at a higher interest rate and did not actually payed cash. That also depends how much cash down you put down or how much your trade in is worth. Are you financing 40 000$, or only 20 000$? Everyone’s situation is different.
The financing part was done through the dealer with a well established bank they have a deal with for car loans. The interest rate was competitive and they took care of all the paperwork, just as if I had gone for the 0% APR. (i had 4% financing on my 2018 with Scotia bank and no penalties for early payment)
That’s in Canada, financing in the states may be different.