It's hard for me to understand how people get pushed around when they're walking into a situation where they may be on the verge of spending tens of thousands of dollars.
The car dealership industry is hyper-competitive; if any part of the transaction makes you feel uncomfortable, let them know and take your money elsewhere. Dealers are a dime a dozen.
You're spending $20,000+ and you don't want to drive around to a few dealers? Spending a day or two to make the best decision is too much for you? That's why you get pushed around.
A much better strategy is to figure out which car you want, then go online and contact all the dealerships within an 8-hour drive asking them for their best price on it.
First of all, I didn't mention "driving around" all over the map; you did, along with what a problem it is. Now you're coming up with some ridiculous scenario about driving around to 5 states? Complete strawman. In every metro area I've lived there are larger suburban areas filled with dealerships of all brands.
If 8 hours is too much time to spend helping form a decision on such a large purchase, than by all means go get "pushed around" by the scary car dealer.
Sadly, outside of perhaps a of brand or two that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that doesn't seem to be a particularly viable option today.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that half the people complaining here have never actually bought a car.
This isn't 1988. All the information is out there. Arm yourself with the price you are willing to pay for the car and make it known. Don't pay more. There is no need for any game, and I've never been forced to play any, having purchased 10-15 cars in my lifetime.
If so, I'm guessing you are not from a region of the world where dealerships are given special protections against competition and actively prevent the sale of vehicles the way the consumer wants to buy them.
If we estimate the purchase price of a home to be roughly 10 times higher than a car - and following your logic - is sounds like you would be willing to spend 10-20 days driving around shopping for mortgages and would talk to 20-30 different lenders at minimum.
Is that a fair assumption?
Then you'll pay slightly more for your vehicle. Just like you'll pay more for a shorter commute or nicer school. No big deal. Life is about trade-offs.
As you say though, the best way around the problem is simply to make sure you don't settle on a specific car so you're in a position to walk away if the dealer isn't great. That's easier to say than do though.
I like the implication here.
Because they're not going to have the specific car/options you want anyway, are they? No, you're going to need to accept what they want to sell...
New cars purchases are a bad financial move since you're going to lose thousands more on depreciation vs. buying used.
It also helps that in the NY suburbs there are about 4 or 5 other places to buy that same exact car within a 30-45 minute drive.
How you feel about the dealership should be accounted for in your model. If the Honda dealers are jerks, don't buy a Honda, or buy a Honda elsewhere. Buying a car is a huge expense and shouldn't be taken lightly.
Of course eventually some corrective upvoting like I've applied already will fix the imbalance for some of these wrongfully-downvoted comments. Perhaps even parent, making this comment look silly. However this is still a phenomenon that has occurred on this page, so I thought I'd point it out.