Just curious. There seems to be lot of disgust with the somewhat adversarial nature of buying a car in the US. How are cars sold in other counties? Is it a negotiation based process, fixed price or what?
I’m in van and pickup sales in the UK and the majority of vehicle sales here are based around negotiation.
Some very desireable new models are sold at a fixed price, if you want a new Fiat 500 you’ve got to pay the list price at the moment as demand exceeds supply, but that kind of thing is the exception.
In Japan they would take the car to your house for a test drive but I hear that is changing now.
I’m in South Africa, and my parents just bought a new SUV. The only negotiation involved was that they got the dealer to throw in the installation of a towbar (US: “hitch”) included in the list price. I imagine that, since they were paying cash* they could have negotiated some kind of discount, but they didn’t.
- Not literally cash as in a briefcase full of notes, but they paid the whole price by electronic transfer.
I helped* a friend in Japan buy a K-car (a class of very small of cars) a few years ago, and it was much the same way as in North America. Except, of course, the salesman was extra polite. 
It probably helped that we drove to the dealership in an Audi.
- Well, I was along because cars have been a hobby of mine since the '70’s, but I wasn’t really any help in that case.
Human beings interact in pretty much the same way outside the US, believe it or not, so of course negotiation is involved. Business is business. I’m curious to know who has expressed disgust at the --gasp-- adversarial haggling in the US car market.
It is more than price haggling. They will cheat and lie. They will agree on a price then say they have to get it agreed upon by the big boss. He of course will try to wring a little more out of you. Then they try to run it through a finance company with disguised rates that gives them a kickback. Then the contract often says things you did not agree to and you have to fight them to get it fixed. Of course the battle over an extended warranty awaits.
So if you all call a hitch a towbar, what do you call a towbar?
This is not true. In many countries cars have a price and you can take it or leave it. Just like buying an appliance in the USA. You do not get the joys of haggling.
But… in the right places, you can certainly haggle over appliance prices in the USA.
In the Middle East and Caucasus you haggle over everything… even postage stamps in some places.
Well, what is a towbar to you? This is what I would call a towbar, and I was led to believe that Americans call that a towing hitch. Was that wrong?
The big difference between US and the UK car market is the competitiveness of the used car market. In the UK there are far more used car sales, with much lower prices for used cars.
I am not entirely sure why this is (I was incredibly shocked at how hard it was to get a decent car for one or two grand when I first moved to the states). Partly I think it’s because of the annual road-worthiness checks that are enforced in the UK (A car that fails its “MOT” is basically worthless). Additionally in the UK you don’t have the distinction that credit companies make between financing a privately purchased car, versus one purchased from a dealer. I’ve NO idea why they do this, I always think its safer going for a private sale, in either case you have to assume the guy your buying it from is trying to rip you off, you might as well choose the amateur rather than the guy who does it for a living.
In the US dealers can make a lot more money selling a used car, partly because there is less info on the car. For new cars it’s easy to find the invoice price and make a deal from there. For a used car the buyer has no clue what the dealer paid for it vs. what he is asking. You can get the Kelly blue book price but those are not always accurate.
Some people in the US trade cars after only 2-4 years so those cars are still priced pretty high when they are sold used. To find a car for $1000 or $2000 it would be a pretty old car and some people just keep those until they fall apart.
You are correct; that’s what we call a hitch. This is what we call a towbar.
Well, outside of flea markets, cars, and houses, most people don’t haggle over anything in the US. We haven’t got the practice.
In Greece the sticker price is pretty much the final price. There might be a small discount or a few extras thrown in for free if you pay cash, but that’s it.
Tons of people. For one thing, this is as much a cliche of stand-up comedy as making fun of airline food being bad. And CarMax and other dealers developed a whole business model around no-haggle prices, because people hated the uncertainty of haggling so much.
To add a little bit beyond what Zsofia said, I think the haggling at car sales is complained about because in general the US doesn’t have a custom of negotiating, especially for new products. Mexico has a custom of haggling over just about every transaction, so I doubt haggling over car prices raises an eyebrow there.
How much for the gourd?
That’s a device for towing your car behind your RV, is it? We don’t have a name for such things, because no-one here does that. I’m not exaggerating - I don’t remember ever seeing an RV towing a car. (RV’s themselves are pretty rare.)