Wanting to replace a 200,000 mile clunker, I came across two good websites on how to buy a car for the best price, Fighting Chance and CarBuyingTips.com. I had the chance to put the tips to work this past week. I didn’t use everything they offered, but enough that I think I got a good deal.

CarBuyingTips.com is just loaded with information on buying a car. Spend a few hours reading through the site and you’ll be a more informed carbuyer. Fighting Chance is a pay site that will provide you with information and market data to help you determine the best price for a particular car make and model. They’ll also make themselves available by phone for any coaching you want or questions you have. I didn’t use the pay portion of Fighting Chance, but their website is still has some information you can use to gain an advantage in negotiations.

Tips from these websites, coupled with my wife’s negotiating skills perfected through years of bargain shopping and my willingness, nay, eagerness, to just walk out when the salesperson started playing games, got us a Honda Pilot 2WD LX for $1700 below the invoice price. And not that sticker price means anything anymore these days, but it’s about $4000 off the sticker price.

The most important tip I used was to buy at the end of the month, when the dealership wants to meet their quotas. If they meet a certain quota, they get a kickback from the manufacturer (not sure if “kickback” is the right term but you get the drift). Knowing this and sensing that they were just trying to hold out for that last two hundred dollars, we left the dealership, asking them to call us back if they want to sell to us at the price we gave them. We were in no great hurry or need (another advantage for us). They called us back 2 days later. After the deal concluded, the salesperson admitted that they were trying to meet a quota before January and having a car sold was more important than the price it sold at, even at a loss. If they meet their quota, I’m sure the kickback they receive will more than make up for the loss (if any, I’m not so sure) on the vehicle they sold us.

During that 2 days waiting for them to call us back, I also did the so-called “Fax Attack”, where I faxed several other dealers in the area, seeing if they would beat the price we wanted for the car we wanted. This wasn’t very successful. Only one dealer responded, with a higher price. So either I didn’t do it quite right, or we got lucky in that we happened to visit the one dealer that really needed the sale.