Wife ordered a BMW X1 a month ago, I wrote down a price for the car, and a price for the trades and told her to just hand it to the saleman and say "If you can do this we will order the car right now".
I had discussed it with the salesman in emails, took a few tries to get a price. I said I'm not telling you what the trade is, I'm not telling you how we are paying for it, I just want a price on the car. Got transferred to a different salesman, told him the same thing, he came up with a price that was close to what I wanted so I told him we'd be down to look at one.
I subtracted another $1000 from the price he gave me in the email and that's what I wrote on the paper. We were out of there in 30 minutes, got what we wanted for the trade, which was less than book, had some minor damage. They will do fine on our trade.
Did the same with the local Audi dealer, the salesperson got back to me with a quote of MSRP ... so I never got back to him.
I'm a big fan of never mentioning a trade, and never mentioning financing until you have a price for the vehicle. A vehicle has a price, the price doesn't change based on how you pay for it, give me that price, the price doesn't change based on what I'm trading either so just tell me how much the car costs. Then we'll work out the rest.
Good used vehicles are in HUGE demand right now, I knew we'd have some leverage with our trade. Dealer did fine on the deal, and we got what we wanted too. It's waiting at the port right now for a boat to the east coast.
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