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I've successfully negotiated in the past, but things are changing.
EV's are coming and many dealers are dragging their feet. They know that EVs are going to kill their service departments long term and service departments are the money maker for them.
Manufacturers know that early poor experience with their EV brand can have severe long term consequences for them. Reputations are lost quickly, but take decades to really rebuild.
So Dealers and Manufacturers are really opposed with the transition to EVs. It makes sense that they would want to take back control of the experience from the dealer. Ultimately they don't want to have to run a dealer network for a lot of the reasons stated above, but it is a chance to renegotiate the dealer model right now. If they want the new cars at all they are going to have to agree to a much stricter model that will probably include a lot more transparency in pricing and a customer order focused system rather than buying whatever is on the lot.
I'm not exactly a fan of a fixed price model, but increasingly the current model is a problem. The customer has so much information these days that there isn't a lot of money to be made in the sale of a car. Sure you can maybe score a little better deal than the next guys, but there are all sorts of buying services, etc.
The real money is on add ons, fees, and financing now. That $3k pinstripe package is a little harder to cross shop. That $900 doc fee. The extra couple tenths on your finance rate plus a kickback. That's were the new car money is these days, not the actual car price. The trouble with all that is complete lack of transparency.
Nothing turns me off more quickly than feeling like the dealer lied. You agreed to a price and all the sudden its thousands more when you show up with all the BS on it. I had one pull the required dealer installed BS on me after agreeing in writing to a price. I had another advertise a rate as a sale price, but was actually a lease capitalized cost and included a combination of incentives that was literally impossible to redeem. Another that tried to add in something like a $2k fee for advertising and marketing a used car. I feel like its getting harder and harder to nail anyone down on a price. I walked on all these people and told them why, but there is always another sucker behind me.
It doesn't have to be fixed pricing, but it feels like its time to deal with transparency in auto pricing. The airlines used to debundle everything and all sorts of required taxes and fees weren't included in the search engines. They got stomped. Same needs to happen here. An advertised price should be required to include all fees and packages except TTL that can vary by buyer location. There should be a fine that is easy to collect if you can't walk in and buy the car at that price without haggling.
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