How best to negotiate with dealer for new car price ?

I was the general manager of a Porsche Audi dealership for five years in the 90s, and then went on the manufacture side and was a regional manager for BMW for 20 years until I retired. There are great suggestions above, true car, writing one price down etc. I can tell you that there is not much money anymore in the product. About 6 to 7 to 8%, but then there are backend subsidies to the dealers of another 4% or 5%.

I would just add this, get your financing together and walk in and do not talk to anybody except the working floor sales manager, General sales manager or whatever they’re calling that position in the dealership. Be very blunt with him, tell him you are there to do a deal and that you will take the car today if everything is right. Dealers hate people who jack them around and Lord knows we do that… Tell him that you want to talk to somebody who is a veteran and has a good CSI score with the manufacture. Believe me they want to do a quick deal just as much as you do. I stress to get your financing together outside the dealership (unless you are using a factory subsidy), because that will elim you getting jacked around by the F and I guy.

And do not think you have any type a deal at all unless you have a SIGNED BUYERS ORDER signed by the general sales manager or floor manager, not the salesman .....On the buyers order put EVERYTHING that you want after the fact; if you want a rental car every time you come in , put that down, if you want it washed on a normal basis, put that down. If you want status reports because you’re ordering a car, put that down. Have the sales manager initial those comments.

And then MOST IMPORTANTLY, when the car comes in , don’t spend a lot of time going through the features, you can read that by yourself. You need to figure out how the car looks when you inspect It so that there is nothing you can get blamed for later as ABUSE or road hazard.. This certainly means paint , swirls , dents, dings, things like that. Even if something doesn’t work like a seat heater or something, that’s not as important because that will be warranty no matter who did it. DONT LEAVE until you are perfectly satisfied with that car, because once you leave, sometimes it’s like getting blood out of a stone.

I’ve done this exact same thing at three dealerships where I moved and knew no one, and didn’t have any special “ins”… it works well.

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Originally Posted by BSoares

The last one I got I contacted 3 dealers in the area via email. Didn't give them a phone number. Used the emails from each to get the others to lower their price, they all kept lowering prices trying to win the business. Eventually got the dealer I wanted (which had the car in stock) to agree on the lowest price of the three. Came over that night with the deal already set so we just had to test drive the car and sign the papers.

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This is my technique also. I'll also contact dealers in nearby cities, in my case Milwaukee or Chicago. You can generally tell who wants to move a car. If a car is super popular, nobody's going to give me a deal on it, so I try not to get my heart set on any particular make/model before I get the lay of the land.

We bought a 2019 Camry XSE V -6 for the wife last Oct and she gets about 24.5mpg mix city and highway. Little disappointed in that. And yes the shift points on the transmission are take some getting used to. It does shift solid though. So far so good. We got 5% below dealer invoice out the door.