No worries. It’s been batted around a few times, but possibly under an obscure topic title or as a tangent to some other topic.
donno …
the data I want is the lowest price the dealer is willing to close the deal … everything else is “fluff”, dstraction and potentially red-herrings…
what does the dealer cost help you if you don’t know their (fixed) cost-structure, finance structure -cost and -terms and their overhead?
Then you need to get into the head of the dealership management and know the position of the dealership with respect to their “number” for the month. You are never going to find that.
It’s possible you can buy a car on the last day of the month at a loss to the dealership, if it has a $50,000 bonus on the line for hitting N cars that month and you’re purchase is N-1 or N-2 and it’s 4pm on a Wednesday.
Unless you’re a damn good poker player, you’re not going to be able to suss that out.
So you want to offer $500 over their dead net cost and let them average out the $2,000 they need to make to cover overhead from other customers who are four-squared into submission. That offer will get you the car 100% of the time, but it might take hours.
That was my thinking.
Their effective cost on your specific vehicle is a pretty darn hard lower bound, except in very exceptional circumstances. Aim just above there, be a polite but utterly obstinate customer, bring cash, and walk away with the best deal. The cost delta from local dealer to local dealer will be very small. It’s their willingness to sell one for teeny markup that varies all over the map.
my post was an answer to LSL’s hypothetical … if we (miraculously) could get one number to help with negotiations… he wants to know what is the variable cost (COGS) to the dealer …
the COGS is just one of many variables … and all those variables could easily muddle the waters pricewise - as (with few exceptions) any business needs to cover Full cost (COGS and all fixed cost) AND make a profit.
I’d rather like to know what is the lowest price the dealer accepts from me (if we - per LSL postulate - could have miraculously access to one number when purchasing a new car).
makes sense?
That would be cool. And was one of the initial premises of the www: that vendors would publish unbiased unchanging bottom line prices and consumers could shop via search engine for the very best deal. For some reason that consumerist nirvana state was not how it worked out.
If there was a way to demand: “Gimme your no-shit rock bottom cash-only no BS price for a [whatever]” and get a binding response then this whole thread would have no reason to exist.
And yes, my earlier posts are acknowledging that we can’t get to your proposed nirvana, so I offer my proposal as something that might be objectively available somehow.
storytime:
a couple of years ago, there was a local (Chile) webpage that worked like an inverted-Ebay (but heavily B2B oriented)…
You’d post your buying-needs online (e.g. need 100.000 brochures 4/c both sides in A4, glossy 120g paper, with one fold by friday the 13th), and potential providers (mostly SMEs) would send you a quote through the website (IM) - your’s to accept.
At this time my employer had one of those pesky “you need to get 3 quotes for everything” policy (mktg material, catering, …) in place and that webpage did a lot of my footwork.
Needless to say, they got bought out by a big comp. (indeed.com?) and their service was enshittified until it died.
Probably the closest to what you had in mind … (or rather I) …
Looking for binding quotes for a 0-mile 2025 Toyota Rav-4 V6 with x y and z trim in semen-white… valid for 48 hours.
well … a person can dream…
'Zactly. All those sorts of ideas were enshittified until the only winner was the middleman. Then, having strangled both sides of his goose, that middleman ended up with at first only few, then soon enough no, eggs.
If you have not heard it, This American Life’s 129 Cars is VERY entertaining and informative. Making your quota to get your incentives from the manufacturer is a BIG deal. And it sounds like a shitty way to make a living.
Back when I first heard of internet sales, I emailed a dealership, got a great price, and walked into their showroom. Cliché Pushy Guy pounced: “Hey, so which of these cars you gonna buy today?”
“I emailed and got a good price on that Celica…”
"Ooh, the in-terrr-net… Well, you get to talk to Rossss…"
Ross walked out in khakis and a sweatshirt, quite the contrast to the polyester plaid sportcoats on the sales floor.
And proceeded to work like hell to get me that price he’d quoted.
While the plaid posse stood around and glared at him…
I got an internet price for a car in 1999. I went to the lot and told them the price. The sales rep told me that she worked in cars for twenty years including fleet sales and that price was absolutely impossible and that there would be hidden fees. I called the internet place and they assured me that there were no hidden fee and sent me a full quote over email.
The next day I was wandering the lot to choose my color. A different sales rep stopped to talk to me and I told him not to bother. I had an internet price that was way lower than they could match. He said that they would actually match it if I brought proof. I came back later that day and they agreed to price match. They tried to add a bunch of stuff during the paperwork and I kept catching them. It was a pain but I got the price.
A Toyota salesman used this exact line (and every other cliché in the book) one year ago.
I might answer that question by saying, I’d accept an offer to sell me the car for a hundred bucks or ten bucks all in.
I probably should have finished the sentence with “. . .by successful salesmen.”
The same sales manager offered me the “fantastic” concession of allowing me to put $3000 of the car price on my credit card, for all those points! When I did the calculation on my phone and said that was only a $60 savings, he feigned astonishment and said I must work in finance. 
The last time a salesman says that to me, i told him, "$5,000”. I was test driving a new car, then selling for perhaps $12,000. The salesman acted like I’d insulted him. I repeated that i had originally told him i wasn’t planning to buy a car that day, i was test driving my top three choices (from different companies) and his was number two of three. So i had no interest in actually negotiating until I’d driven all three. But sure, if he offered me such a good deal that I could resell it at a profit and start over, I’d buy it.
I did not buy anything from that salesman.
I think what infuriated me the most about buying a car was the dealer add-ons. Not extended warranties, but borderline uninstallable stuff like window tint, pinstripes, and stuff like that.
My truck had no pinstripes and no trunk tray when I got it(didn’t want either), but I noticed them on the invoice a day later. Dealership gave me the run-around about how it’s “not really a trunk tray, it’s the underseat tray” and that I could come in and get pinstripes applied. The maintained that I didn’t want either and that I just wanted my money back.
After a week or so of this game, Honda corporate sent me a customer service survey and I ripped the dealership up one side and down the other about not getting the refund for stuff I didn’t actually receive.
I got a call from the dealership not fifteen minutes after filling out the survey asking me where to send the refund check.
Don’t know and don’t care. There was a coin dealer that used to pay $5 under spot when buying and $5 over spot when selling American Silver Eagles. He claimed, “I need to pay bills.” as the necessity of screwing his customers like that. My conclusion was it was one of two things
Intentionally trying to screw the customers and playing the victim card.
He got screwed in negotiating his rent, utilities, payroll, whatever. Not my fault and not my job to save him from himself.
When I bought my current car, they tried adding charges for the door edge guards and locking lugnuts at the last minute. I’m no great negotiator but I did point out that I agreed to purchase the car as shown, and those were on the car as shown, so I should not be expected to pay extra for them. They dropped the added charges.
Oh, the pinstripes. When I bought my Volkswagen, it had dealer installed pinstripes. They looked terrible on the car, and were installed poorly, so even if I had wanted them, they’d have had to re-install them.
Part of the negotiation was that I didn’t want to pay for them, and I wanted them removed. They agreed to this, as the dealer I was buying it from hadn’t even put them on, because the car had been acquired in a trade with another dealer.
The salesman put an order into service to get it taken care of. A day or two later I check back, still not done. This goes on for a bit. Eventually, the salesman calls and says the pinstripes are removed, and I can complete the sale. He confessed that he went out on the lot, grabbed the edge of the pinstripe decal, and pulled them off himself.