The story about the sales manager and MSRP is nonsense. Every dealer in the world will tell you you're getting a special deal they can't give anyone else and that they're losing money on the car. Ask every customer driving off with a new car from a given dealer, and 90% will tell you they were told the dealer lost money. How can they stay in business?

The truth is if you're on the lot and ready to buy, they're incentivized to sell to you. Forget email and phone calls - to get the real price you have to walk into the dealer ask for the bottom line price, out the door, tags, tax, and delivery included (they won't include the things they'll try to sell you later, like the extended warranty or service plan or upgraded mudguards or whatever). It sounds like there is more than one dealer in your area. Stop emailing and invest a Saturday visiting them. Sit down with the internet salesman and tell him exactly what you're looking for. He'll find out if there's one on the lot or one at a dealer close enough they can swap out for it. If there is, he's going to do what it takes to sell to you, even if it's coming from another dealer.

Also, sign on carsdirect and get a quote from them. They'll be polling the same dealers, but hold them to their price.

Don't sit and wait, you have to go out and get the car. Someone will sell it to you at the price you want. Just refuse to pay more.

 

The only thing you can do for now is have a sign contract commiting to $300 over invoice. This still won't stop them from selling "your" car to someone else. I had a dealer tell me 4-8 weeks for an ordered car and a killer price but I got dealer to match it (salesperson screwed up) on a instock car.

 

I only went to the dealer to drive the car and get a feel for the various packages. the offers they were trying to make me could not touch the price I was getting through ordering. I could wait for car(3months) so they had zero leverage. ordering saved me about 5 grand