Good advice. I bought my current car in 2019, and the market was a bit easier I think. Well, if it's bad as you say right now for dealers, maybe it's comparable. End of the month and end of the year--always the best time.
I was able to take advantage of the DC region having tons and tons of VW dealerships, so there was a huge amount of price competition already, making it a bit easy for me to dictate the price that I wanted. I spent maybe 10 or 15 minutes at the closest dealerships and didn't really like talking to those guys, so I ignored them. I started calling dealers further away from me until I got a few that would agree to negotiate over the phone and at least make offers. The GTI that I got had an MSRP of $34k at the time. In the end, I told them that I didn't want to pay more than $29k, all in, doc fees whatever. This wasn't that unreasonable for known local sales for this model of GTI. The one that I eventually bought it from laughed a bit and said they couldn't do that. 4 days later, on a Monday, they called me and said they could do that price and could I come by today, so I did. They had sold the one that I wanted (color), but picked one up from a nearby dealership and sold that one to me. It was mostly painless going in to make the purchase--it was only that they had one finance officer in, 2 people ahead of me, and the first person was just getting railed or something. We were waiting for that idiot for like 1 hour to finish the deal. It was nuts. Took me like 10 minutes to sign and get out.
Couple of extras, though: manufacturer financing are the best deals, usually, but the dealers don't like to work with you on purchase price so much when you go with that offer. Just take their junk financing if it's a condition of purchase price. You can always go straight home and switch your loan to a better one that you want. This costs nothing in the end. Get pre-approved for what you want and know that you will use that in the end. Honestly, the financing they offered me wasn't bad at all, but I switched it out anyway just out of spite, haha.
Also, extended warranties on new cars are, of course, a scam. It's adding about $3k to your purchase price. The primary role of the finance office is to sell you these things. That's all they care about. Saying no to this and walking out with the price you agreed on is where all the time and effort will go in closing. So, definitely don't do this but also....just accept it if you're annoyed with them and walk out. Thing is, it's federal law that all extended warranties, any state, are easily cancellable and refundable as a percentage of how long it's been active. I think it's something like within the first 2 payments, you can refund 100% of the total cost of the extended warranty, and it's quite painless to do. So, of course don't take the warranty, but it if somehow becomes a condition of the price that they want to sell to you, then just take it. It's actually really really really satisfying to then refund it to yourself later, knowing that they just lost that commission, lol.