Some personal observations:

1. Since "moving up" to the "luxo" or "near luxo" end of the market, I have had surprisingly few bad dealer shopping experiences and zero bad purchasing experiences.

2. Given stories I hear at work, shopping for a HondaYotaFordWagen is still an arduous experience.

3. I submit that a significant percentage of the really good salespeople wind up working for one of the luxo marques for obvious reasons.

4. Until the relatively recent Audi boom in the U.S., Audi was not considered a viable luxo marque, hence many dealers were or are still populated at least partially by a number of not-so-good salespeople and some shoppers do not have the same psychology when walking into an Audi dealer as when walking into a BMW dealer (for example).

5. Many books exist which set up a hypothetical "war" situation between the buyer and the dealer and purport to instruct the buyer how not to leave ANY money on the table.

Leaving MB out of the discussion for the time being due to its single price policy and leaving the SF Bay Area out of the discussion so as to normalize the demand for BMWs and certain Lexii, I would submit that the sales folks at the other luxo dealers can pretty much spot a serious buyer who knows what the going price for a particular car is and proceed accordingly without rancor. The same serious buyer at an Audi dealer might or might not encounter such a salesperson and, if not, could be drawn into a more adversarial experience.

One of the benefits of the Internet is that the customer has access to essentially the same knowledge as the dealer, thus limiting the games that can be played. I would suspect that the car buying experience will continue to mellow over the next few years.

Mitch