It's important to do your homework first before you arrive to the dealership. Edmunds.com is a good place to start. They give you all the info you need plus prices on the options and the target price you should ask for. I also used Carsdirect.com as another source to compare prices. Carsdirect.com is really good because you can pretend you're buying from them by selecting all the options you want, and they'll tell you the MSRP, invoice, and their price for all the options you chose. For example: my silver 2002.5 P5 was selected with the sport automatic (AT4) and car mats, since all the P5's I looked at had car mats. Before taxes, my car came out to be 16,608 invoice, 17,995 MSRP, and Cardirect.com's price of 17,108 (excluding the 750 rebate because I chose the low financing and you can't combine both). Depending on what car you're looking for, you have to determine if it's possible to get that car below invoice. Usually luxury cars and Hondas are difficult to do so, unless it's towards its last year of production. However, with the P5, it's easy to get it below invoice. Since 16,608 was the invoice, I decided to shoot for 16,500. It's not too below invoice, and it was a nice round number to work with. Most of the dealerships now have salespeople, who tell you about the car, and sales managers, who actually gives you the prices. In my case, this was true. The sales guy came to me with a price of 17,800 from his manager. I said, "Yeah right, that's not even close to what I want. I want 16,500. I have the down payment in my pocket. If I can't get it at 16,500, forget about it." So he went back to the sales manager and came back to me with more numbers: first 17,500 then 16,800. When he gave me the 16,800 deal and said he can't go any lower, I stood up, smiled, and said, "Thanks but I think I'll just go somewhere else." The salesman was disappointed and begged me to stay and let him try one more time. And I finally got the price I want. So, first know what numbers you're dealing with. Know the invoice and msrp with your options. Second, show them that you like the car, you're serious about getting it, but not in love with the car. In other words, you really like it, but you're not willing to give up anything for it. And of course, be strong. Stand up to them and don't back down. If they let you leave, it's their lost. You have other dealers and worse comes to worst, you can always come back. It's a big investment, and it's your hard earned money. YOU decide how much you want to spend.
