What I learned at Ford is "cash price" means nothing anymore. Cash used to be king when it took two to three months for a dealership to receive their money from traditional financing sources. Now they usually have their money in 24-48 hours so there's zero incentive to negotiate down to get cash. The plus side for them is that there are still a LOT of customers who still think "how much if I pay in cash?" is still a good strategy and they trained us to play to that. A sales manager would knock a few hundred off the price and the buyer thinks they're getting a better deal when they're usually leaving money on the table.
The best ways to get a great deal are to:
1. Watch a dealership for a month or two and see what weekends they do their biggest promotions on. This tells you when their key metrics are about to come due. At the dealership I worked at, the 16th of each month was when sales metrics were calculated, and the 10th and 25th were when commissions were calculated, and those dates were when everyone was willing to wheel and deal. They would drop a price $2,000-$4,000 to close a deal on those days and wouldn't budge on the price the next day.
2. Look at the inventory numbers and always pick the lowest one. If you see two vehicles that are 100% identical, get the one with the lower inventory number because that means it's been on the lot longer, which means the dealership is either paying, or about to pay, interest on the vehicle and that is a loss for them. They're much less likely to comedown on a price of a car that's been on the lot less than 45 days.
3. Most major dealerships have multiple incentive deals. These are usually just lumped in as "dealer incentives" but it's important to know what they are. There are factory rebates (these come from Ford), zone rebates (in my case these came from the North Florida Ford Dealers Association), and lots and lots of spot discounts that the factory offers from time to time to move particular cars. If it's a slow month for Chargers, Dodge will add an incentive discount to get the cars off the lot. Dealers will usually only tell you about the factory rebate and not mention the others unless they are asked about them.
4. Lots of dealers love down payments. This isn't because they want them, but because financiers like to see them because they show commitment to paying. If I have $500 in cash, I can use it as a down payment and get $500 worth of value, or I can go buy a POS driver car off CL, spend $50 getting it detailed, and use it as a trade in and get $3,000 or so in value for it.
Then I can take a good car that I was going to trade in, sell it for more money than its trade-in value, and apply that money to paying down the principal on the car note.
5. Dealerships with in-house financing operations usually offer discounts if you finance through them. You can buy the car through someone like Ford Motor Credit, get your discount, then turn around and pay the note off or if you get better terms from your bank, take out a loan and pay it off that way. This gives you a lower price and the best terms. Going back to cash is king thinking, you could get a $500 discount for paying for the car with cash, or you could get a $2,000 discount for financing through FOMOC and then turn around and pay off the car the next day with cash.
One day could gain you $1,500.
I worked for a VW dealership that was a major player in NE Wisconsin and we played the game the same way. :toothy10:
