Yep. My goal is invoice or a little less.
Never focus on monthly payments, as I often see people doing.
Focus on:
1. Price of vehicle - invoice price is good. Sometimes (rarely) when they're desperate to sell a car, they'll go below invoice in to the "hold back" money.
2. Fluff items - adding high margin items to your car and charging extra for them. locking wheel lugs, nitrogen fill, tint, (bed liners in trucks), etc. only pay min. for these things IF they've already been added. Nitrogen fill = should be free, locking lugs -ask to remove or only pay $40 for them, tint - ask to remove or only pay $150.
3. Trade Value - get as much as possible on this right away, don't try to surprise spring it on them last minute. I go around to several dealers and
first find out who is going to give me the MOST for my trade. Then I go back around and shop for best deal on car, and get them to match my best trade-in offer. (or I sell to private party and do a courtesy trade / in&out)
4. Interest Rates on loan - after the above items are hammered out, figure out financing. Look online at Bankrate.com, etc.. and make sure you're getting a good rate. Personally, I prefer big rebates to the zero %, b/c I usually don't finance a lot. Car loans usually are < 3.0 %, if you're paying more than that you need to get your credit score up! And anything under 2.0% is basically
free (borrowing) as inflation is often 2-3%.
5. Rebates - Your salesman should be doing his/her best to get you all of the rebates that you qualify for, but ask & ask again to make sure he/she is looking for everything that you might qualify for. My salesman "found"
an extra $2,000 rebate for me on my 2017 GT, that surprisingly no one else had heard of, on top of the $500 I was already getting at the time.
http://fordauthority.com/2016/09/ford-offers-new-loyalty-incentive-exclusively-for-mustang-owners/ I think it was Sept-Nov only, and only for 2013-2014 owners, which I was a 2014 GT owner. The best part was that I did a courtesy trade, so I got the $2,000 extra rebate/ trade in credit AND I got a decent sale price of $3k more than the dealership trade in offers AND I got the tax savings on the trade in.