Car salesmen... sheesh!

[Flagg37]

You actually have more bargaining leverage with new cars than used (imo). With a new car you can find the invoice price of the vehicle you want. This is the price that the factory sells the vehicle to all dealerships. This at least gives you a starting point. You know that the dealership will not go below this price since they will not make any money. There are a few exceptions to this where there are other factors or deals that make the dealership money so that they can go below the invoice price on the vehicle but are making more money some where else. This is fairly rare and not usually something that you can control. If you know the invoice price then you can decide how much you are willing to pay the dealership for that vehicle.

Though you have more bargaining leverage with new cars, you can generally get better deals with used cars, you just don't know what the dealership bought it for. There are tools like kbb (Kelly blue book) that will give you pricing for wholesale values of vehicles but it's no guarantee that the dealership actually bought it for that price. If the car was a trade in then they could have bought it way lower than that price depending on how well they worked over that person in their deal. When I was a car salesman I sold way more new cars but made way more money off of my used car deals. I think I was always pretty fair with people (part of the reason I'm not a car salesman any more) but used cars generally have more margin.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Ah good to know, didn't realize there was actually very little markup between invoice and sale price, although the invoice is usually the base car, and all the extras that you can't necessarily see is a lot like saying "now why is that coral $20 and that coral $80?"

But it explains what those numbers at CostCo Auto means now, I was thinking invoice is what they were selling it at, and I might get it cheaper than that.

 

[Wlachnit]

Besides invoice, the other useful piece of info are mfr rebates. These are rebates that a dealer will receive from the manufacturer when they sell the car. This is how a dealer can sometimes sell at invoice.

 

[yellojello]

I remember back in 1999, forgot which website, but my older brother bought a brand new car online for near invoice price, had it delivered by flatbed to our driveway, with balloons and flowers, and 0 or 1 mile on the odometer. I think we got a mousepad too with their website name on it, sitting somewhere.

But yea, truecar.com and other similar sites are pretty helpful in knowing the ballpark price of negotiating.

 

[Flagg37]

Besides invoice, the other useful piece of info are mfr rebates. These are rebates that a dealer will receive from the manufacturer when they sell the car. This is how a dealer can sometimes sell at invoice.

This is one of the exceptions where they may be willing to sell even below the invoice price.

Ah good to know, didn't realize there was actually very little markup between invoice and sale price, although the invoice is usually the base car, and all the extras that you can't necessarily see is a lot like saying "now why is that coral $20 and that coral $80?"

But it explains what those numbers at CostCo Auto means now, I was thinking invoice is what they were selling it at, and I might get it cheaper than that.

There will be an invoice price for all models (EX, LX, Limited...)but your right, things that got added onto the vehicle after it left the factory would not be included. Expect that those options are way marked up though.

 

[rygh]

There are also car brokers. (professional car buyers)
You go test drive, figure out pretty much what you want.
Then for a fixed fee, they will do all the negotiations and everything.