Originally Posted by clyde
Truecar is worthwhile as a source, but they're far from a final word. They exist to generate sales leads and that's how they make their money. Many of the places with price info get theirs from Truecar these days (not sure if USAA is one of them).
I suspect there's at least one good Mazda or Mazda 3 forum with reasonable recent pricing info out there and you can get all the info you need from it in 15 minutes or less. Another 15-30 minutes browsing inventory on cargurus.com (seriously, check cargurus.com out), mazdausa.com and local dealer sites should give you an idea of what incentives are available (and which ones you may qualify for).
After that, you ought to have a pretty good idea what a fair price is. Not a grind it out price, but a fair price.
I would suggest going the online route and do the bulk of your negotiating by email starting with the online quote request form on specific cars at a variety of dealers. The initial quote request is BS, but when they contact you in repsonse, you tell them what you want, you want to buy soon (that day if the hour makes it possible), and be demandingly firm that they break their quote out for car price, incentives, rebates, doc fees and state fees (taxes, title, reg, etc).
In the offer- counter-offer process, stay below your target price initially and let them come to you. If your target is reasonable and in the "fair price" range, it shouldn't take more than a handful of emails. Then, pick up the phone.
OTOH, when you know the price you're looking for, you can just walk in somewhere, but you're betting your time that it will work out at that dealer at that time. And it can. But if it doesn't, you've wasted a lot of time.
It sounds so much more complicated than it is and it's not a grind. You just need to know what you want to pay. Don't play the "out the door" game. Negotiate the price of the car separate of incentives, rebates, fees, taxes, and everything else. All that stuff will be what they're going to be. The price of the car is the about the only thing that can vary. Know what the other things are and use them in your mental calculations, but keep them out of the negotiation process.
The one exception is if there is any manufacturer to dealer incentives that the dealer chooses whether to use to close your sale. GM (or just Chevy?) had up to $4k "flex cash" available at the time I bought. The manufacturer was making $XXX available to each dealer for the month. Up to $4k could be used on any one vehicle, but once the full $XXX was used, they had no more for any vehicles for the rest of the month. Some dealers applied a little to each car, some put a lot on their hard to sell cars and would not put anything on their fast movers. When I was negotiating, some offered to use up to $3k, most $2k or less. The one I bought from used all $4k.
Remember that dealers and manufacturers built the system to get you to part with as much money possible. It doesn't take a lot of effort to find a fair and reasonable price. Decent dealers will get you to that price pretty quickly...you just need to know what it is first.
Good luck!
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