I grew up around (mostly large, high volume) car dealerships. Dad was a mechanic and was friends with the sales folks. Car sales people come in two flavors, the career guys. These are the guys that know cars and what gets people to buy them. They make good money(knew one guy that was over 300k/yr, he was an extremely rare dude.). This is the vast majority of the guys you'll see in large dealerships now days. The sales person competition has simply weeded out the less than stellar sales people, dealers can't afford to have them around the sales floor.
The second is the transients you're talking about that just move through dealerships because they think it's quick money. Now days these guys are mostly at the buy-here-pay-here places and lower end dealers.
As for negotiation....it's just not like it used to be. Used to be the sales guy could get you a ton off and various other perks like warranties and detail jobs and shit. Now days the sales guy can do some of that, but in the end the big saving for consumers is in the financing office. If you're willing to spend the time you can save big big money by working with/against the financing agent. Note; paying cash is almost always a bad idea when buying a car. The rebates banks offer are HUGE and you're not going to get them by paying cash.
> Now days the sales guy can do some of that, but in the end the big saving for consumers is in the financing office.
Yeah, it's astonishing how much the car will cost you after you pay everything off through the loan vs. the agreed upon price. A 10% interest rate on a 5 year $30,000 car loan costs $8,244.68.
It's not uncommon for people with so-so/bad credit to get rates in the 20+%. A 22% loan on $30k over 5 years costs almost another $20k! That's like buying an entire extra car!
The second is the transients you're talking about that just move through dealerships because they think it's quick money. Now days these guys are mostly at the buy-here-pay-here places and lower end dealers.
As for negotiation....it's just not like it used to be. Used to be the sales guy could get you a ton off and various other perks like warranties and detail jobs and shit. Now days the sales guy can do some of that, but in the end the big saving for consumers is in the financing office. If you're willing to spend the time you can save big big money by working with/against the financing agent. Note; paying cash is almost always a bad idea when buying a car. The rebates banks offer are HUGE and you're not going to get them by paying cash.