I was in car sales before i went into the investment biz so I think I can help. First figure out what you want as far as size, seating storage, ect, and go out and test drive them all. Then I would recomend narrowing them down to a few. One of the most overlooked steps from this point is resale value. The average person buys a car every three years so check kbb.com look at the vehicles your interested in and see how the vehicles have depreciated over a three year period. Honda, toyota, and nissan usually hold value better than the rest. This is usually due to large rebates by the other companies. Dont be fooled by the great deal, if gm can take 5000 dollars off of the selling price, How much is the car actually worth, because you can and will lose all of that value when you decide to trade it in. Now on to the wheeling and dealing. Every dealership has the actual invoice on hand and most will sell the car for that price. Go online and find the invoice price, then go to your local lot and tell them that another dealer offered 500 under invoice(you should have this price that you found online on a piece of paper and glance at it while your making your offer, and tell him that you like him and that the location is closer to your home so you'll buy it there if they will match it. Be sure to stick to your guns and the worst that can happen is they will say invoice price is the best they can do. Tell them that your gonna have to think about it and pretend to leave. Chances are they will say hold on a minute and they will go back and talk to the boss again. Take the offer they come back with and you've gotten a great deal. Hope this helps, and sorry about the long post, but since im not in the biz any more, i look back on how easy it is to get a good deal if you know the game.