Car salesmen can be interesting people if you get them to drop their guard a bit and chat. A surprising number of them are simply transiting through car sales to make ends meet between their main career. In a rough economy, car sales is almost always a way to get a short-term job.
Of course the negotiation part is annoying and time-wasting. I suppose for every person that gets a good deal, 10 get a bad one and that's why it lasts. It's also one of the reasons why CarMax and Costco Auto are extremely popular even if the price you pay isn't necessarily the best possible you can negotiate. Buying a new car can literally take an entire day, and not dealing with the negotiation bullshit can save hours off of the purchase experience.
Also, negotiations don't end with the salesman, you can negotiate quite a bit during financing. You can usually get a lower rate if you buy all sorts of warranties and other cancelable agreements. Then go home and cancel those agreements immediately (it's not easy, they make it very hard to figure out how to do it). Over the lifetime of the car loan it can save you thousands of dollars in interest payments.
I grew up around (mostly large, high volume) car dealerships. Dad was a mechanic and was friends with the sales folks. Car sales people come in two flavors, the career guys. These are the guys that know cars and what gets people to buy them. They make good money(knew one guy that was over 300k/yr, he was an extremely rare dude.). This is the vast majority of the guys you'll see in large dealerships now days. The sales person competition has simply weeded out the less than stellar sales people, dealers can't afford to have them around the sales floor.
The second is the transients you're talking about that just move through dealerships because they think it's quick money. Now days these guys are mostly at the buy-here-pay-here places and lower end dealers.
As for negotiation....it's just not like it used to be. Used to be the sales guy could get you a ton off and various other perks like warranties and detail jobs and shit. Now days the sales guy can do some of that, but in the end the big saving for consumers is in the financing office. If you're willing to spend the time you can save big big money by working with/against the financing agent. Note; paying cash is almost always a bad idea when buying a car. The rebates banks offer are HUGE and you're not going to get them by paying cash.
> Now days the sales guy can do some of that, but in the end the big saving for consumers is in the financing office.
Yeah, it's astonishing how much the car will cost you after you pay everything off through the loan vs. the agreed upon price. A 10% interest rate on a 5 year $30,000 car loan costs $8,244.68.
It's not uncommon for people with so-so/bad credit to get rates in the 20+%. A 22% loan on $30k over 5 years costs almost another $20k! That's like buying an entire extra car!
Of course the negotiation part is annoying and time-wasting. I suppose for every person that gets a good deal, 10 get a bad one and that's why it lasts. It's also one of the reasons why CarMax and Costco Auto are extremely popular even if the price you pay isn't necessarily the best possible you can negotiate. Buying a new car can literally take an entire day, and not dealing with the negotiation bullshit can save hours off of the purchase experience.
Also, negotiations don't end with the salesman, you can negotiate quite a bit during financing. You can usually get a lower rate if you buy all sorts of warranties and other cancelable agreements. Then go home and cancel those agreements immediately (it's not easy, they make it very hard to figure out how to do it). Over the lifetime of the car loan it can save you thousands of dollars in interest payments.