Final pricing for preorder

I feel your pain. I have met some real slimeball New car dealers and some used car dealers who should be locked up. So just to keep them on their toes when I used to go to car lots I would bring my wife along and we would play good cop bad cop with the salesman. One of us we be nice and pleasant and the other not so nice. We usually traded off and my wife was better at the bad cop than me.!!!
My goal buying a new car is not to make friends at the dealership but to get such a good deal that they pretty much want to kick me off their lot when the sale was done.
Now my wife won't go to the lot to buy a new car. I usually deal with internet sales manager to keep the games to a minimum.
I don't want pin striping, undercoating, lojack, etc...I especially don't want to get "stuck' with it.

 

About twenty years ago, I went with my roommate to buy his new Mazda RX-7. While the salesmen were doing their usual "keep you sitting in the showroom for two hours" routine, I met a woman who just came back from a test drive, and she said she'd just bought her car for $15,000. We chatted about it, and it was the same trim level as the one my roommate wanted, and they wanted $18,000 for his.

I told him we were going to hold our ground for the $15,000 or walk. The salesguys went completely nuts. The car they'd sold her was an unpopular color. It was a special ad. They couldn't sell him one for $15,000, because it was below cost. Her car was different. She'd bought the undercoating, extended warranty, dealer financing and a million other options. They had more stories than Walt Disney. I told them there was no way we were buying it for a penny over $15,000, so the salesguy looks at my roommate and asks, "Hey, who's buying this, you or him?" It was pretty laughable that he thought he could turn my best friend against me to "be his pal" and pay him $18,000.

It definitely helps to have somebody with you who's willing to make you walk away, but I think these days, with Internet sales and all the online information, it's pretty easy to find the lowest price from among ten dealers, and you can find out what people all over the country paid, not just the last lady who left the dealership.

My roommate got his RX-7 that night for $15,000.

 

The order tool will calculate MSRP for model and options that you selected plus destination charge (should be $760 in CA). You and the dealer then agree on the final price for model and options plus destination. Doc, tire, license (~10%) will go on top later. You will need to see what the online contract says regarding adding anything else that is not legally reuqired (e.g. dealer installed options) by the dealer later on. If you don't trust the delaer why don't you just ask them to give you in writing that they won't add anything? Worst case you can always cancel your order, but then of course you don't have a car...
Good luck!

 

I will be doing this in a few hours, when delivery date comes, I am prepared to walk away if they even try to add a floor matt to my car.
By the way, I was quoted $750 under MSRP, almost enough to cover the destination charge !
But I will believe when I see it. He told me that I can have free "reign" of the dealership charging station after we close the deal. He only has a few pre-orders so the lines will be short and it is less than 2 miles from my driveway so I would probably use them for "daytime" peek hour charging when needed.

 

On the flip-side, I went with a dealer who told me not to order the accessories online (wheel locks, bumper applique, etc.) because they're going to sell them to me at their cost when I get the car... I couldn't get below MSRP with them, but they're giving me a great trade-in value - very close to the private retail value around the bay area right now for my car. That got my business... and in fact, they want to get the trade-in car now, rather than later, so it's all good (not a bait and switch 5 months from now).