Buying:

1. Do your research before you ever set foot on a lot.

2. Negotiate the price for your turn-in, the car you're buying, and any financine seperately and in turn.

3. Do your research before you ever set foot on a lot.


One trick I pulled, and to my great pleasure the dealers hated me for it, was I went in earlier in the day on a Saturday to test drive, and without telling them, pick which one I want. (By doing my research ahead of time, I already had the model narrowed down, and knew the dealer invoice cost.) That night I returned about half an hour before they closed and told them I was ready to buy. (Note: they will never, ever, tell you to come back the next day. And being almost human, car dealers don't like being up all night after a long day, so they won't be as eager to play all their bullshit games so long as your bottom line price is reasonable.)

Of course they wanted to try to intermingle the price and financing. I insisted we determine the price of the car before talking about financing. I made like I didn't care about financing - actually, I was already preapproved and never intended to allow them to finance it.