What should I pay for this car?

Why one number beats a price range

A range is comfortable for us and useless for you. Standing in a dealership you need a single figure you can say without flinching, and a second figure that ends the conversation. That is what this page produces: open here, hold here, walk above this.

The target sits between our excellent and good price bands, which means it is aggressive but defensible. Sellers meet defensible numbers. They ignore lowballs and they happily take anything above fair value.

Negotiate the price, never the payment

The single most expensive mistake in car buying is negotiating a monthly payment. A payment can be made to look like anything by stretching the term, moving the down payment, or quietly adding products, while the price of the car never moves.

Settle the vehicle price first, in writing. Then talk about the out-the-door total. Only after both of those are fixed should financing come up at all.

• Ask for the out-the-door figure, itemized, before you discuss financing.
• California caps the doc fee, so it is not the fee to argue about — the padded ones are everything else.
• Sales tax is charged on the selling price, and a trade-in does not reduce the taxable amount in California.
• Bring your own financing quote so the dealer's rate has to compete with something real.

Where the target price comes from

We do not resell a paid market-data feed. The target is built from the same published Car Dogs benchmark that powers the Car Dogs Score: an estimated original sticker price, a depreciation curve by age and segment, a brand resale adjustment, a mileage adjustment against the 12,000-miles-a-year norm, and a condition adjustment.

Everything is an estimate, and the formula is public so you can check our work. Enter the real original MSRP and the estimate tightens noticeably.