This is kind of off topic, but I was looking at Kelly blue book and they had a link for carsdirect.com. So I tried it out with a few different cars. Most european high end cars were valued around MSRP, but the maxima was actually below invoice. How is that? You can get a new 20th Ann. Maxima for under $27,000.
Is there some kind of catch?

 

I read through almost everything... there is no catch to it... they want 500 dollar under invoice for the max.... but I didn't want to wait.. so...

 

I put in an order for a 5 spd Se, sterling mist, C&C package with carsdirect back in August. The price was right and I was psyched, but a month later they still didn't have the car. At that time they had estimated an additional 3-4 weeks, but could not promise it even then. If I knew when the 5 speed was coming in, I may have waited, but it seemed like forever and it was at the time of the baseball playoffs and I kept seeing my car zip across the desert in the commercials. I broke down and got an automatic through priceline. In and out of the dealership in 30 minutes. Carsdirect is probably great if they can find your car.

 

There's a dealer holdback built into the price of every car, usually 2-3% which is profit directly for the dealer. In addition, most auto makers will give the dealer a performance bonus/prize for meeting certain quotas, so by selling in volume at a lower price, they can make it back with this bonus.