I have a friend who has bought about eight hondas at a small stand alone local dealership. She claims she gets great service, deals and is loyal to her salesperson. Note I think as long as she gets a reasonable deal she is happy, I doubt she gets the deal of the century and my hunch is most of her deals are not amazing but I have not seen numbers. I tried her salesperson, mentioned her name, a couple of years ago and he offered me $500 on a trade that I ended up getting $1500 for (and I was extremely happy to get that, it was worth 1000-1200). I shopped it at a bunch of dealers across brands and the other offers ranged from $800 - 1900, that was a high ball number when they thought I was going to pay $550 to lease a Pilot EXL at another dealership. I looked up the numbers and discussed it with my mechanic. I was not going to sell it privately no matter what, did not have the time or patience for that among other reasons.
We are in a very populated area and many dealerships are high volume and they own more than one location or brand. I have leased my last three cars through a couple of these high volume places and I think I did well.
Now I really need a car soon and there is still an inventory shortfall. To the extent I am contacting dealers, should I even bother with the smaller places? Any good stories about dealing with the smaller dealerships? I do not care about service (either from my salesperson who I will not see again for 3 years or the dealership’s service department since I have a mechanic I really trust and hate going to the dealership for service (just brought my Highlander in and ended up paying $150 for all the extras on the so called free service, never again).