There are just some people who feel that buying a car is a competition that they just have to "win". The sort of folks who would drive 500 miles to save $500. on a $40+K deal. They don't even seem to respond to arguments about the cost of their time etc.

That being said, MB gets around this issue by having a fixed price policy, BMW skirts the issue due to the demand for its most popular models (at least here in the SF Bay Area), and Lexus dealers have such a huge markup over dealer cost that they can appear to give deep discounts and still make a reasonably significant amount of money.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more the fixed price concept grows on me. Let dealers compete on service (OK, many of you can stop laughing now...)

Mitch