The Long-Hidden Truth About The New-Car Business In the mid-1990s, in response to the sudden easy access to dealer invoice prices when the Internet arrived, the auto industry launched a secret program to "redesign" the automaker-dealer financial relationship from the ground up, a process that has continued ever since. This game-changing fact was deeply buried until 2012, when James Bragg, the country's leading automotive consumer advocate/activist, "cracked the code" and unearthed the truth. He describes that discovery process and shows how the total reconstruction of the invoice-retail price relationship has (a) turned the long-held consumer perception of "dealer cost" into absolute fiction, (b) radically transformed the nature of dealer cash incentives and (c) outdated the core assumption behind all the "target price" negotiating advice on the Internet. He then tells you how to apply that knowledge when you're car shopping. Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag lets all the hot air out of the "boomfog" of information and advice you're finding elsewhere. It will change forever the way you approach the process of buying or leasing a new car.
About the Author: James Bragg has been a full-time consumer advocate/activist for over 20 years as the day-to-day, hands-on founder-manager of Fighting Chance.com, a national information service that's helped over 125,000 consumers buy or lease a new vehicle. Much of his knowledge has come from his personal contacts with tens of thousands of those customers. His objective has always been to uncover information and develop negotiating strategies that help consumers get the best deal available, often revealing truths no other information source is providing. His penetrating, "outside-the-box" analysis and recommendations fly in the face of over 30 years of conventional wisdom about how to buy a new car. He's the author of the Car Buyer's and Leaser's Negotiating Bible, a Random House publication that notched 65,000 sales over four editions. He now owns the rights to the book and plans to update it. His business background is rich and varied. He's been a Procter & Gamble Brand Manager and a Hunt-Wesson Foods New Products Director, and he's managed the national corporate and regional dealer advertising programs for an auto brand. Mr. Bragg is a graduate of Phillips Academy (Andover), Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa) and the Harvard Business School.