Good. We very seriously need this.

My very first time in a dealer was in '88, and I bought a Sprint, the little 3 cylinder car, for something like $5K and change. The total finance amount was 12K! And I was young too.

Oh well, that actually was a great little commuter car, and I got much more than that 12K out of it, but knowing how shitty the dealer was just chapped my ass big. Never did forget it. Won't either.

While the kids were growing up and I was paying the house off, I really didn't see any need for new cars. Just bought reasonable used ones, mostly for cash, and that really saved me a ton. But we eventually ended up wanting an SUV for the dogs, camping, kids, friends.

During the years I was away from the dealers, I moved from a pure tech role to one with a heavy sales / consulting component. Turns out I was ready, and went to battle. The people here saying it's war really aren't kidding. I think the no bullshit fixed price dealers are OK, but that price really isn't all that good of a deal. It's just not painful. Good for them to offer a reasonable offering to the market.

Sadly, I wanted a Ford, which meant going to an older school type dealer. Slimy as hell. For what it's worth, I've put the overall strategy here on Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-bargaining-techniques... Lots of good tips on that question overall too. Online, etc... I think the share means you can read all the question answers for that shared question.

It's an ugly process, and it took me about 8 hours to buy that car. I had to do things like when they left me, I would leave too, going to the other end of the lot after getting my free coffee, and just staying there waiting for them to trudge out there, only to walk all the way back, and do it again. It's actually funny in hindsight, but maddening at the time.

Or, I would end up in ego contests: "Are you man enough to buy this car?", to which I actually said, "Only if you aren't such a bitch I would be embarrassed to admit buying from..." good god. But that worked. Got the manager with the brass rings and went to town on the deal proper. Nothing reasonable was going to happen as long as I was dealing with the front end bruiser. Sad.

The Expedition I wanted was MSRP at something like $42K? Maybe $40. I got it for $31,500 and that's one hell of a lot of margin. My guess on the invoice on it was in the high 20's, btw and I got them to show it to me after about 4 hours. But the pain was not over!

The owner of this dealership had a very hot daughter doing contracts. She wrote one up, leaned into me hard and said, "since I know you so well already, how does this one look?" Also funny looking back, but maddening at the time! I had to cross out lots of ugly numbers, and that was because they had packed all that money back into the contract! Worse, had I not been dealing on the front end, some people probably get the ugly treatment on both, paying way too much for the car too.

Since then, I've helped a few people get cars. I ask for a percentage of what I get out of the price of car. I've gotten $1K pretty easy, with people actually wanting to pay me more, which seems to me a great indicator of just how painful dealer purchases really are.

Tesla isn't interested in any of this. They want to make a great car, ask an appropriate amount for it, and sell it to people who see the value. Nothing at all wrong with that, and if these dealer clowns had any soul at all, they would be working double overtime to build trust rather than abuse it at every turn.

There isn't anything in this process I find redeeming. Go TESLA! Edit: Actually, that's not true. If one is into the brutal sport of it, doing battle with a dealer to score a sweet price on a car they worked way too hard to sell can be gratifying, but this really isn't high value for the vast majority of people.

I'm not really a vindictive sort of person, but man! Many dealers have something ugly coming their way, and I hope they get it big. To the few out there doing a fine job of it, I'm sorry. The company they keep must be absolutely terrible.