Better still, save your money until you have enough to buy the car for cash.
Negotiate like mad, set a price, get them to write it down on a sales contract.

Then, when they come to the "ok, so how will be pay for this?" point, whip out your American Express card, and watch the color drain from their face.

Argue - strenuously - that they MUST accept Amex as payment for anything they sell, per the terms of their Merchant agreement. When they deny this is so, pull a copy of the Amex Merchant agreement out of your backpack, with the pertinent section highlighted.

Go back to the service area, and have the cashier run the transaction for $32,413.43, have it go through, sign the receipt, and then enjoy the 32,413 Amex Member Rewards Points to take your wife on a free flight to Disney.

Well, at least that's what I did.

What if the dealer doesn't accept American Express for anything?

Just kiddin...you're absolutely right, arrive at a price before you tell them how you're gonna pay for it. The problem is that the salespeople are SO good at working things like that into the conversation, you find yourself giving them more info than you planned on.

Same goes for trade ins, establish the value of the trade in before you set the price for the new car.

John E

After every credit card commercial they should play a little Tennessee Earnie Ford.

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"

Izzy, are you sure that it wasn't actually your 10th cousin's best friend's girlfriend's nephew's neighbor giving you a thumbs down reference?

Just kidding. I've heard the "too many credit checks" advice, too. But as a point of clarification, you can check your own credit history as much as you want without it counting against you. Just be careful of how many businesses you let run your credit in a relatively short period of time.

When I was living in Indiana a few years back 99-01 (there abouts), I was in need of a new car and didn't have to do anything to get a test drive. Went to several dealerships and ended up with an olds (yeah yeah... old man's car - but great for commuting!) mainly cause of customer service. I must of test drove 12 cars over the course of the weekend and most time alone till settled on the alero. Took all the cars on the highway for 20 mins since I was going to clock alot of hours on the road then.

Even had the same place do the service on the car for a few years... even if I wasn't living in the same city. I would try to schedule some time in that area. They took very good care of me.

Never once happened to me. Never. I go in, I say, "I want to drive THAT."

I've never given more than my first name, I show that I have a driver's license, I don't let them touch it.

That is not true. Multiple credit checks do not always lower your credit score. There is a difference between a hard pull and a soft pull.

There is some info in this thread that is just plain wrong. A good place to go for questions on all credit related questions is www.creditboards.com

As far as Izzy's point about credit checks that are run to just get a test drive, this CreditBoards thread says that car dealerships can only do hard pulls, which do affect your credit score. Well, at least no one posted in that thread that dealerships only do soft pulls for test drives. I've never read CreditBoards before this, but my understanding from past reading was that car dealers always do hard pulls as well.

Hard pulls affect you, barely, and if you do them all in 1 week it's not affecting you like 1 per-week. They get `lumped`, and your score won't go down 5x if you get 5 checks.

When I got my truck a few years ago the 1 dealership shopped around and I had 5 checks from 5 different places in 1 day, my credit maybe dropped 5 points.

If you have a house, have a car, why do you need 800pts credit score anyway.. I mean 720 is just as good most of time at any place.

I've never had that happen. Any dealer that wants anything more than driver's license or insurance to test drive a car (especially credit info) will be watching me leave the lot with no sale.

As others have said: set the price then talk payment. It's nice to be able to write the check sitting in their office but not always possible. I managed it on the last one two years ago but if I had to do it again today, I'd have to set the price & call the bank.