this is one reason why I buy newly used cars(other reason is financing can be ridiculous on cars 3 years or older). I look around for cars with around 5k-15k miles on them, and negotiate starting at the kbb price as a rip off considering they bought the car for a couple thousand less. i.e. an 08 ms3 retails for $22k from what a dealer should sell max, but if someone trades the car in the max they should expect is $17.5k. so I would go in and target the good price(which is $16.6k) as the most i'll pay for because the dealer always have something bad to say about your used car, even if it's in great shape, so I b.s. them back and say your car isn't excellent either and look for small evidence of it, such as small rock chips and stuff no one can actually prevent or find something ridiculously small and be like see look. I've found this to work really well, and it's worked great for me twice. I got my 02 protege for $15k out the door fully loaded with a sticker price of $19.1k in 03 new, I got the 02 spec v in 05 for $11k even with an $2200 extended warranty used with 36k miles and they were asking $13.5 for the car, and the two cars before that were given to me. I plan on doing the samething with getting an ms3, but I'm going to low ball them tremendously because of the economy. I'm shooting for a used 08.5 or 09 sometime around august, but one of the dealers near my house still have 6 new speed3's on the lot, and they've been there for at least 7 months now that I know of considering the 08.5s have been there for over a year now. 4 of them are 09's. My advice is to print that stuff up on kbb and go from there, but don't show them anything until you get what you want, and be willing to go some where else too.
