HailCorduroy

Technology has probably changed things, but I worked on the used car lot section of a big new car dealer in the 90's. The price that was on the sticker was $3,000 + whatever we had in the car (purchase price + oil change/service + detailing). Unless the car was special in some way (sports car, loaded up luxury car, etc.), they would sell it for $1,000 profit at any time. So many people had no idea they could negotiate $2,000 off the asking price.

My stepfather had a friend who owned some buy-here pay-here lots. It was like a money factory for him. He would buy the cars the new car dealerships took on trade, but couldn't sell on their used lot, usually paying no more than $500 - $1000. He paid his salesmen $250 per sale. The down payment was whatever he had in the car, then they paid $50 a week for a couple of years. In other words, once you paid 5 or 6 payments, all of his costs were covered and the next 100 payments were profit. Here's the kicker...you miss 1 payment? Your car just got repo'd and guess where it goes? Back to the lot and he'd sell it to someone else, getting the same down payment all over again. He would sell the same car 2 or 3 times before someone finally would pay it off without missing a payment.

Yep, part of my job was getting the cars from detailing and getting the stickers and key tag on. It didn't matter what the car was, I added $3,000 to the cost. Keep in mind, this was one dealership and it was the early 90's. I did my entire job with an ink pen and some stickers. We did have a computer system that I used to look up what we had in the car, but it was completely internal (and was one of those awesome green text mainframe apps). Now days, they probably use KBB and other tools to price the cars.

Last resorts for buying a car on credit. You don't finance through the bank, you make (usually) weekly payments at the dealership.

Yup, always negotiate the out the door price. Get your financing in order before you step foot on a dealership lot. Extra fees and financing are where they can fuck you. If you negotiate on your payment amount, you're gonna get screwed somewhere.