Kind of creepy. The author's a thoughtful guy, and it's so good to know how this process works. But his transformation is eerie, the practices he writes about are creepy. The whole thing is old-fashioned haggling, but with glamour-dust thrown over it; you get the feeling that people come away as from fairyland, with loads of unregarded time having passed and your life absolutely changed--thousands of dollars poorer... and you aren't sure what happened.

I'm thinking the online deals may be the way to go...

Here's a page on buying a new car utilizing some of the resources and techniques availed us by the Internet:

http://www.advweb.com/michael/newcar/

There's also a link in the article to a much more detailed page on haggling the old fashioned way and coming away in good shape, if you're into psychological games and would like to do that just for sport.