Negotiating a New Car Price -- Your Stories.

[Big TR]

We bought an 07 Honda Pilot a few months ago.

Step 1: Used our super credit rating to get a blank check pre-approval for financing from Capital One.

Step 2: I emailed several dealerships in the area and got their lowest internet price.

I went to this website: http://www.carbuyingtips.com/car4.htm
and downloaded this spreadsheet : http://www.carbuyingtips.com/offer.xls

I then looked around Edmunds to get invoice, holdback, factory to dealer incentives, etc., information.

Step 3: I took the lowest offer to the dealer closest to my house, whom I didn't get a quote from, and told them to beat the lowest offer and get my color. They did and we got $6,200k off the MSRP, ~20%.

Step 4: I told them if they could beat the rate on the financing, they could finance my purchase. They beat it by a few basis points, so that helped them make a little money.

Step 5: I told them if they gave me a fair price on my trade in, I'd sell it to them. Otherwise I'd just private party sell it. It was a fair offer based on work needed to be done on the 6 year old vehicle and my hassel to sell it and the tax credit I got on the net new purchase price.

Done and done. The happy wife has her new gas guzzler.

[MegaFossil]

Since some of the people in this thread used to be dealers I was wondering if they could answer a question I've always had.

Do dealers like it when you can just pay for the entire car on the spot with cash or would they rather have you finance the car b/c they can make a little more on bad finance deals?

[CappyAA]

Big TR has some good points in there.

I just recently bought a car 2 weeks ago and I used the fax attack method recommended by fightingchance.com. I strongly recommend this method.

The gist of it all is that you contact 8-10 dealerships around you and tell them that you are going to buy a car and that you'd like to communicate via fax. Make sure you talk to the manager and not some lowly salesman in the chain. After you speak with the manager and get their fax info, the packet fighting chance sends you includes a great template fax to send over them as well as all invoice prices, holdback, incentives, etc. Include this in your fax.

You will probably get responses from 5-6 dealers which will quote you a price. You can also use this by renegotiating with dealers (i.e. some dealers will beat other dealer's prices).

I bought an '08 Infiniti G37 Coupe fully loaded. The MSRP was about $44k and the invoice was $39k. I calculated using the car buying tips spreadsheet that a $41k offer would be good and fair. Well I got a $41k offer from one dealer and another brought that offer down to $40k. So the method got me $4000 under MSRP (~10%) on a model that just came out 2 months ago. The $40 I spent on the packet (which was like 50 pages worth of info) was well worth it.

[NajdorfDefense]

[ QUOTE ]
Big TR has some good points in there.

I just recently bought a car 2 weeks ago and I used the fax attack method recommended by fightingchance.com. I strongly recommend this method.

The gist of it all is that you contact 8-10 dealerships around you and tell them that you are going to buy a car and that you'd like to communicate via fax. Make sure you talk to the manager and not some lowly salesman in the chain. After you speak with the manager and get their fax info, the packet fighting chance sends you includes a great template fax to send over them as well as all invoice prices, holdback, incentives, etc. Include this in your fax.

You will probably get responses from 5-6 dealers which will quote you a price. You can also use this by renegotiating with dealers (i.e. some dealers will beat other dealer's prices).

I bought an '08 Infiniti G37 Coupe fully loaded. The MSRP was about $44k and the invoice was $39k. I calculated using the car buying tips spreadsheet that a $41k offer would be good and fair. Well I got a $41k offer from one dealer and another brought that offer down to $40k. So the method got me $4000 under MSRP (~10%) on a model that just came out 2 months ago. The $40 I spent on the packet (which was like 50 pages worth of info) was well worth it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bingo. There were 3 places close to me and a 4th 20mins away so I just did it in person. I did it at the end of the month too, when I went back to lowest bid he chopped another $500 off the price to get me to sign that day. [monthly sales contests ftw!]

'Dealer Invoice' is a nonsense number, Without knowing demand, holdback, etc, etc it just makes you feel good knowing you paid $500 over or whatever, not knowing dealer was getting $3k in holdback and incentives and was willing to go lower.

[One Outer]

Salesman don't care, but people who do that generally are going to be total asses about price. The finance people, or course, hate it.