I always walk in saying "let's assume no trade-in, no down payment, just talk raw car price with me, assume I can pay in cash, then we'll talk about the rest"

I always walk in saying "let's assume no trade-in, no down payment, just talk raw car price with me, assume I can pay in cash, then we'll talk about the rest" This lets me actually have 1 number to focus on and negotiate on, and walk out on. I always say "I'll be back in an hour" and really use that hour to think it over and come to approximately what the price will be. If you get a 6 year loan, you can do the math dividing it up yourself and then worry about interest later. It's not thaaaat much. Now. Once you settled on a price, start talking trade-in. The reality is if you know the value of your car on other sites, you generally know what they'll offer. Even with removal of taxes, you can easily calculate how much it is worth. Basically if you get more than $500 more for your car elsewhere, it is worth it. And now the down payment and interest rate are kinda irrelevant. Their goal is to mess with those but not budge on the value of the car. But since you already did that... Now when you talk interest rates, always reject theirs, then take the next number and basically lower it by a percent. Get them REALLY CLOSE and just force that. The reality is that they ABSOLUTELY have wiggle room within the %. They'll usually try to make cash on you via an extra % or 2. So if they offer you 7% they can easily offer you 4.5%. The down payment doesn't matter. It is just whatever you put in takes off from the remaining price.