[abowers]

We looked at the 2006 Ford Focus, Honda Civic, and Toyota Corolla in October. The Honda and Ford dealerships were straightforward with us, the Toyota guy tried to avoid telling us his asking price and just kept lowering his "monthly payment" for us. So that was an immediate turnoff, in addition to preferring how the other 2 cars handled.

We decided to go for the Ford Focus and after lots of online research, and visiting a second Ford Dealership to compare quotes, we went with the first Ford Dealer (same price actually, within $100, but we had been in touch with the guy at Dealer #1 a lot and he had located the car with the options we wanted at another dealer).

Anyway, my Sig. Other did tons of research online on how to come up with our asking price (in relation to the invoice price). We also researched interest rates at banks and online in comparison to the Ford rate-- but, we qualified for the 3.9% rate through Ford which was much better than any bank. We ended up agreeing on exactly the invoice price, And we got a $500 recent college grad rebate, and a $500 Financing through Ford Rebate on top of that. So we were pretty pleased.