How to negotiate for new car price - Forester

I have been using a simple system.

I pick several dealers. I tell the dealers what I am going to do. That is I will offer several dealers to bid for my sale. whoever makes me the best offer wins.

Note: never let the dealer to take your car on a test drive without you in the car. If you fail to do this means the dealer may well take you car and hide it down the street etc, so you are stuck there.

I have used this same deal several times and been happy with all the results. 

The dealer did surprise me once, At the signing the dealer handed me the papers. I brought this to the attention of the dealer and he just smiled. I guess I will never know what was going on. But I got a good price. BTW I once drove to a out of county dealer and did well.

I live in Los Angeles. Some people here go to dealers in more rural counties to buy their new cars.
I’m assuming they’ve gotten all their prices before they head out of town.

I bought a 1999 Malibu by going on the internet to find the dealer’s invoice with the exact equipment that I wanted & then went to the local dealer & told them what I wanted. The sales person went into her computer & got their invoice which was exactly the same as mine . We agreed on $500 over invoice which saved me about $1,000. All I had to do was wait for them to order it from the factory which took about 3 months. I was in no hurry. All went well.

Another deal I made. I looked at a Ford Victoria, test drove it & made up my mind what I would pay for it. The sales person wrote out an offer that was lower than I told him I would pay. After him haggling with the sales manager for a while, I walked out. That cinched the deal & I ended up getting the Car for $50 less than I originally said I would Pay.

As others have said, you just need to stand your ground.

The most recent deal I made was for a 2011 Equinox. I went into the dealer’s website & found the car that I wanted. I called the dealer to get a trade in value for my wife’s Malibu. I told him that was too low & he said he would not quote a higher value without seeing the car. We went into the dealership and he offered $1000 more than he had quoted on the phone. He also discounted the Equinox by $1000. The deal was made even with a low interest rate. of 3 1/4 %.

I can't believe how rudely DeepPlaid was treated by a few individuals . . . or was it only one?

I’ll admit that I had a problem with DeepPlaid.

His biggest tip in getting a good deal was to get a good rapport with the car salesman. And according to DeepPlaid you achieve this by buying a new car from him every year. I don’t know about you but I find that a little absurd.

He also thought that people like me who only buys a vehicle every 8-10 years will NEVER understand how to buy a car. He also made some wild inaccurate assumptions.

All-in-all he may have had a good deal of knowledge of selling a car…he didn’t seem to understand what we as customers go through to get a deal. The hoops some dealerships/salesmen make us jump through to get a good deal. Why do I have to spend 3-4 hours of my time negotiating with the car salesmen?? Why do they play these numbers games?? Why do try to high-pressure you into buying a car??

Buying a car (or almost anything) is an adversarial process. The salesman is trying to maximize his/her profit and we’re trying to get the best deal. It’s as simple as that. And that difference can be several thousands of dollars. The last vehicle we bought was my wifes 07 Lexus. The price we paid was about $6k LESS then what the asking price was. I don’t know about you, but I think $6k is a lot of money. I’ve found car salesmen LIE, CHEAT and try to rob me of my hard earned money. I’ve had salesmen/dealerships change the deal AFTER the contract is signed. I’ve been buying cars since the early 70’s. I’ve seen the good-the bad-and the ugly. I’ve taken some hits along the way…and learned from my mistakes and moved on.

There ARE good dealers and good salesman out there. But NOT all are. And the ones that aren’t - I won’t deal with.

Mr. Meehan’s advice is good if you have a lot of dealers around. But, there are a few makes that have such a low number of dealerships that you might have to go out of state to do the multi-dealer deal.

If I wanted a BMW, for example, there’s only 2 in the Columbus area; which is surprising, actually. If I expand my search for the whole state, there’s 4 by Cleavland, 2 near Dayton, 2 in Cinnci, and one by Youngstown. Either Columbus dealers are about an hour from me while the next closest ones are 2 or 3 hours away.
If I wanted a Kia, there’s 8 in a 50 mile radius of me, with the closest one 20 miles away. 5 Hyundai dealers(50 mile radius), with one being on the other end of town from me