Always question and get clarification on any number or charge you don’t understand or remember discussing when you are negotiating car prices.

If you don’t like the answer or feel the answer was more of a tap dance than an answer, remember, your the customer, no deal can happen without you.

You can walk.

And be prepared to do so no matter how much of your time you have invested in working the deal to this point.

Certainly the overall economic climate, and the current economic climate of the dealer will have a direct bearing on how deep you can cut into the dealer profit.

Keep in mind that basically a dealer can charge whatever the market will bear. So, if the car is in great demand and sales are brisk, you will probably have a tougher time negotiating your car deal. Again, patience is the key. Check around outside your geographic area. A short road trip to a different dealer could literally save you thousands.

On the other side of the coin, remember it’s easier to negotiate on overstocked vehicles, or cars that have been on the lot longer.

Cars that have sat on the lot unsold for a longer time begin to draw attention to themselves from the dealer and the owners. These units known as ‘aged’ units can be a source of great savings to you.

Sometimes it will be apparent why the car has not sold. Such as a hideous paint color or an odd choice of options added to it. Other times there will be no explanation why the car hasn’t sold.

But with these ‘aged’ units, the dealer will usually be more willing to work with you on the price and your trade. Finding these aged units may take more investigation on your part, as you’ll have to keep an eye on them as time goes by.

The dealer will move them around the lot to keep his lot looking fresh, but if you can find one, and you like it, work the deal hard. The dealers are incurring finance charges on these vehicles every day that they sit on the lot. And if it’s close to the next model year arriving on the lot, that even adds a greater urgency for the dealer to move these units.

Eventually the dealer will offer additional cash bonuses to the sales people to make these units go away, and that’s good for you.

One price and no haggle dealers have been popping up here and there since the success of GM’s Saturn division. The success of Saturn speaks for itself with it’s customer satisfaction ratings hovering around the top for its class.

But don’t think for a minute that Saturn dealers don’t have to move their inventory.
compare car pricing

They do. I speak from experience.

As the factory cranks out more cars Saturn’s or not, they have to move.

Although the sales approach may be less high pressure, trust me, the urgency to sell cars is still there; and negotiating is still part of the mix. Especially when there is a trade involved.

If ‘no haggle’ dealers truly weren’t allowed to get creative with the numbers when working on a deal they would have cars that would sit on their lot for a long, long time. Particularly when the dealers get backed up against a new model year coming in.

Time waits for no one, and when the new model year start coming in, the previous year’s have to go away… period. This is a fact of the business that will never change.

Even no haggle dealers have to find ways to move their stock… to say they won’t negotiate the sticker price… well I won’t argue semantics with a no haggle dealer, but I’ll guarantee you that if not the sticker price, your trade difference (or some other creative math) what you have to pay will be a lot less if a particular car has to be moved.

I know… I don’t say this to shed a negative light on the dealer. Moving inventory is what it’s all about. And for dealers, more often than not, this involves negotiating their car prices. Sometimes vehicles seem to move themselves and sometimes certain vehicles need help.

I’ve lived it.

So, work yourself a deal.

Next up… when are the best times to buy a car…