I recently bought two cars, here's the relatively pain-free process I went through. 0) Wait until the model years are flipping on the car you want, they need t

I recently bought two cars, here's the relatively pain-free process I went through. 0) Wait until the model years are flipping on the car you want, they need to get last model year inventory off the lot 1) Used Costco to get a prenegotiated price. There's some other things attached with it, but walking in with a price below MSRP opens up the negotiations. 2) Used a couple other sites (e.g. [1]) to get price quotes on the make/model/trim/configuration I wanted. A deluge of emails and phone calls occur within a day or two after this. 3) Simply tell each responding dealership that you are soliciting offers from all the local dealerships and to email you with their best price. 4) Pick a dealer, not the one with the lowest price, but it doesn't matter which one really (but some will try to differentiate with special warranties or other things), open with the Costco price, then follow with the lowest quote you received. Say "beat this and I'll buy my car here, otherwise I'm going to these guys". And don't budge. 5) They'll always come back with a lower price, maybe not by much, but it'll be lower. Be willing to leave if they don't. Congratulations you've just negotiated a low price for your new car. Watch the price buildup for unnecessary fees and fight them on those (or have them throw in overpriced things like floor mats or cargo nets or whatever in exchange). 6) Once you get to finance, don't necessarily accept their rates, the dealership finance people can solicit financing on your behalf from other banks. Simply have evidence that somebody can offer you a loan cheaper than the dealership can offer (Credit Unions are great for this), and haggle a little with them, they'll eventually use their network to do all the legwork for you and it can save you quite a bit of money. Bonus round: 1) Take your old car to Carmax and get a quote from them to buy your car. 2) During trade-in talks at the dealership see if they'll meet or exceed Carmax's quote. 3) If they don't, you have a guaranteed buyer (Carmax) at a good price. If they do, you get to unload your car hassle free. 4) Take car to Carmax and sell it, or try to get more on the private market. Carmax takes about 30 minutes and the people are pleasant. It took about a day in each case to buy (and sell) each car, but I managed to save between $3-5k below the retail price in each case, then made above the KBB estimates on my old cars. There wasn't any emotion involved, nothing got heated and the negotiation portion of the process took about 20 minutes at the dealer, most of it was the salesperson waiting for their manager to approve a price reduction. I'd describe the experience both times at two different dealerships as "pleasant", and because we had the negotiations locked up, spent most of the time making polite conversation with the salesperson. 1 - http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/best-price-program/ http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/best-price-...