How I bought my new car, and which dealers played ball (Chapter 2)

Reference this post for Chapter 1.

After visiting these dealerships and driving a few cars, we decided the Honda Pilot was our number-one choice. So the next thing was figuring out a price. If you've bought a new car without checking out the community forums on edmunds.com, I bet you've left money on the table. The forums are near-real-time discussions and on all things regarding cars. A key component of these forums are the discussions on what other people are paying *right now* for the car you want. Want to know how low you can go on a car price? You can find out there what others have paid in recent days and weeks.

From my Edmunds search on the Honda Pilot, I learned that a few others on the board were paying a total of invoice-price (not MSRP) *minus* $1,000. The $1,000 is an unannounced factory-to-dealer incentive. Outside of even-more-hidden incentives, I figured the only money left in play is the dealer holdback, which is about $900 on a Pilot. On the Pilot I wanted, an top-line model with a DVD player and all-wheel drive, the invoice price was $31,718. (MSRP was $35,195)

Based on what I read on Edmunds, and based on the fact that we weren't in a huge hurry, I decided to go in low, offering $30,200. If we could only find a 2-wheel-drive vehicle we liked, we'd offer $29,100. For both flavors of the Pilot, the price represented Invoice minus the $1,000 incentive minus almost all of the holdback. We thought we'd give it a shot.

Next chapter:How the deal was done, and what we paid in the end.