How To Buy a Car...NOT!

This will be an in-depth look at how to buy a car for the absolute best price, brought to you directly from a salesman that has sold literally dozens of cars. The following tips are the ones that have gotten customers the best deals possible, mainly because I got tired of seeing them. But I digress...

STEP 1: Plan to drive as many cars as possible.

At this stage don't worry about price. Drive that Benz so you know just how well the Hyundai Sonata stacks up. We will get to payments later on. Also, don't limit yourselves just to cars. Many 4X4's are about as nice as a car. Or nicer, like a Range Rover. The fact that mere mortals need a mortgage, not a loan, to get into one for payments less than a good beach house is again irrelevant. Another advantage to not sticking to a particular type of car is that it doesn't give the salesperson any way to compete against a particular adversary.

STEP 2: Arriving at the dealership.

Try to be as annoying as possible. Borrow your (poor) friend's 1991 Hyundai Excel with no air conditioning and 140,000 miles to take to the cheaper dealerships. You will need a Porsche, Mercedes, or at least a Corvette for the higher-end stuff. Along with the car, go to the closest day care center and pay the sitter $20 to take the three brattiest kids they have with you. Bribe the kids to terrorize everyone but you. See if you can fashion a new-car temporary paper plate to stick in the back window of the Hyundai with yesterday's date on it. When approached by a sales person, give them a fictitious name and address so they won't bug you down the road. The first thing out of your mouth MUST BE "I want your best price on a blah-blah." Or possibly "How much can you get me off the sticker?" Next, tell him/her that you want to trade the Excel in on one of their cars. Also, as soon as you can, tell them you financed only $1000 over the sticker price because of that IROC Camaro you traded, and the current financing is for 66 months. And you don't want your payments to go up. This should give you total anonymity for the rest of the evening. However, do wear your Nikes because to catch your salesperson to get a test drive you will NEED THEM! The nice thing is he/she will most likely not waste his/her time going with you on the drive, which means you can positively thrash the car. Be sure to have the car back by the end of the day, and be sure to complain loudly that the car ran out of gas, and that's why you were gone so long. Don't let them catch you with the siphon hose in your car, though. Repeat until you think you have found the car you want. Eventually you will find a salesperson dumb and/or bored enough to go with you on the test drive. The game is called "Make The Other Guy Puke," only the salesperson doesn't normally know you are playing this until it's your turn to drive! If the car is front wheel drive, you can start as soon as you back out of the parking lot. Engage reverse, bring the Rpm's up to 500 over redline and sidestep the clutch. With all that weight up front over the drive wheels, and since most cars have their lowest gear ratio in reverse, you can positively pin someone's eyeballs to the windshield if they aren't suspecting it. This is also a good time to practice your speed shifts without having to worry about those synchro jobbies. Some cars are just naturally a lot better than others. Occasionally you'll find cars with rev limiters that you would never have expected to have them. Do watch the cornering speeds at first, though. Most new cars have not had their tires scrubbed in, and they can be quite slick even if it's not raining. Cornering with your head out the side window is fun, but staying in your lane may be challenging.

STEP 3: Figuring Payments.

Make a list of the top 10 or 15 cars you'd like to buy. Look at the top car on the list, and the price. Forget it. You can't afford that one, or the one below that. Drop to choice #11. Start here. A good rule of thumb for figuring how much a month a given car is going to cost is to remember what your first house mortgage was. If you are still looking at the top car on your list, look at your CURRENT mortgage. Subtract 3 (THREE) years from the term, and that is how long you will be making payments. If you are looking at a European car, ADD three (3) years.

STEP 4: Returning to the Dealership.

Before you go back, you must arm yourself with every possible piece of literature that will help you demoralize your opponent. These include all the "How To" books on buying cars, as well as about two inches of fan-fold computer paper. It doesn't matter what is actually ON the printouts- these are for effect only. Show up no more than 10 minutes before closing, preferably on Friday or Saturday. Have the manager drag your salesperson kicking and screaming out of the rest room, and return him/her to the office. Be certain that you have a DIFFERENT set of bratty kids. This will REALLY confuse them, and that is a vital advantage.

STEP 5: Making an Offer.

All the how-to-buy books give really complex formulas that tell you what the dealer pays for his cars, but this is totally irrelevant. Who cares what he paid? All you want to know is what YOU can buy one for. But just to have a place to start, here's what you should use: Take the list price, subtract 35%, add your IQ, age, and the middle two digits of your social security number and use this as a starting point. NOTE--They will probably not take your first offer, but this is okay. The key is never make more than one offer on the exact same deal. To keep them guessing as to what you really want, change something each time. Make an offer on a 2 door car instead of 4, an automatic instead of a manual, or from one trim level to another. If the dealer finds out just what you are looking for they will say something like "We normally sell those cars for invoice except for unusual circumstances. Yours is an unusual circumstance. It will take sticker price to buy that car." (And if you've done what I've told you to do, he probably means it.) After they refuse your first offer, come up on your price (referred to as a 'bump') twice, for $5.27 each time. If they still haven't tossed you out, stand up and leave. Come back the next long night and offer $38.74 more. Keep this up for a week. If they haven't budged on price for two straight days they are probably pretty serious, and then you can go to the next dealer with some REAL AMMO. Eventually someone, somewhere, will get tired of throwing up whenever they see you and sell you a car cheap.

STEP 6: Service

Now you can start all over with the service department, asking for free service work, and with the parts department asking for free parts. Make sure you get a new parts catalog with every visit. Sometimes they will advertise expensive things like C/D players on sale. This means they must have a bunch of them, and need to liquidate some inventory. Giving you one will help them out. Make sure you point this out to them.

STEP 7: The New Beginning