What's the Most You've Ever Talked a Car Dealer Down?

[Anonymous]

My budget is $17,000 and that needs to include dealer processing fees, taxes, tags and title. The car I am eyeballing is currently listed at $19,000. Am I being unreasonable to think that this can be accomplished?

[Anonymous]

Tell them you have $17K total and take it or leave it. I'd try to negotiate down to $16K so you have money for everything else. It depends on the car. What is invoice? I'd try to get 6-10% off invoice.

[Anonymous]

1K off 20K

[Anonymous]

Buy at very end of month when they're trying to make their sales quota.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buy at very end of month when they're trying to make their sales quota.

+1

[Anonymous]

Kelly Blue Book will have the answer.

[Anonymous]

PP from above. Negotiated a purchase of 35k used car to $28k including all fees and 10 year extended warranty plus mats, rim locks and $500 cash to spend in the store.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buy at very end of month when they're trying to make their sales quota.

+1

+2

[Anonymous]

When you go in, tell the sales person that $17K is your out-the-door max that you will spend. Check out the Truecar.com site or your current car insurance company may offer the same service for free. Take a good look at the bell curve graph that comes and the prices for the cars you are interested in. My last car purchase was a CRV. I got it for $4,500 off of the sticker price with 2 features added on.

Also, do a search on this forum for "internet car" sales or something like that. There is a huge amount of great information on two different threads. I usually have had great buys in the March/April months. Be willing to take last year's model if it gets you more features.

Refuse all add-ons. If there is something in the car that you don't want, refuse to pay for it or be ready to walk away. A lot of the electronic-type stuff they can "disable" and then won't charge you for it.

Remember that they want you to buy their car more than you want to buy the car.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you go in, tell the sales person that $17K is your out-the-door max that you will spend. Check out the Truecar.com site or your current car insurance company may offer the same service for free. Take a good look at the bell curve graph that comes and the prices for the cars you are interested in. My last car purchase was a CRV. I got it for $4,500 off of the sticker price with 2 features added on.

Also, do a search on this forum for "internet car" sales or something like that. There is a huge amount of great information on two different threads. I usually have had great buys in the March/April months. Be willing to take last year's model if it gets you more features.

Refuse all add-ons. If there is something in the car that you don't want, refuse to pay for it or be ready to walk away. A lot of the electronic-type stuff they can "disable" and then won't charge you for it.

Remember that they want you to buy their car more than you want to buy the car.

Good luck!

This is extremely helpful. Thank you.

The car I want to purchase is a 2017 Acura ILX with 22k miles if that helps to paint a better picture.

I will search the forums as you've suggested.

[Anonymous]

You can also email a bunch of the dealerships to tell them what you want at what price, that you can buy today, and you are shopping around.

[Anonymous]

Shouldn't you not say up front the highest you can pay? Start lower and then you have wiggle room.

[Anonymous]

IMO experience, used cars have less wiggle room than new because there are no incentive programs from the manufacturers.

[Anonymous]

I negotiated about $2,000 off our car by finding the exact car we wanted for the cheapest price we could find for that make/model/year/mileage/interior at a dealership about 10 miles away from us. The only problem was that we didn't like the color. So I found (on the internet) the same car with similar mileage and use at a dealership about 50 miles away in a color we liked, but it was $2,000 more. So I contacted the second dealer, emailed them the link to the first car and asked if they would sell theirs for the same bargain price. They did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you go in, tell the sales person that $17K is your out-the-door max that you will spend. Check out the Truecar.com site or your current car insurance company may offer the same service for free. Take a good look at the bell curve graph that comes and the prices for the cars you are interested in. My last car purchase was a CRV. I got it for $4,500 off of the sticker price with 2 features added on.

Also, do a search on this forum for "internet car" sales or something like that. There is a huge amount of great information on two different threads. I usually have had great buys in the March/April months. Be willing to take last year's model if it gets you more features.

Refuse all add-ons. If there is something in the car that you don't want, refuse to pay for it or be ready to walk away. A lot of the electronic-type stuff they can "disable" and then won't charge you for it.

Remember that they want you to buy their car more than you want to buy the car.

Good luck!

This is extremely helpful. Thank you.

The car I want to purchase is a 2017 Acura ILX with 22k miles if that helps to paint a better picture.

I will search the forums as you've suggested.

Glad it helped! Also, locate other cars (do an Internet search) with similar features and mileage. Play them off of one another to get the price down. But be sure they know that $17k is your out-the-door price otherwise you will negotiate $17k sale price and then they will add in sales tax and registration and all the other stuff, presenting you will a bill for $19,950 or something. It is amazing how much of that stuff goes away when you hold firm. Hope you get the car you want!