[ernie]

That shocks me a little bit. We've been using e-mail (and/or Truecar) for our last 4 vehicle purchases. Usually have dealerships even up to 4 hours drive away eager to do business that I wouldn't do it any other way. I bought my car a couple weeks ago now. I started the "negotiation" portion of things two days before driving the car off the lot. I used trucar and contacted other dealership as far away as St. Louis (4.5 h drive) and within 3 hours I had those 7 firm offers from 7 different dealerships. A Bentonville area dealership won the business. Maybe doesn't work as well in Canada I don't know.

I know people who have had dealerships do a bait and switch from e-mail to showing up in person but I make it clear from the initial contact that such things will result in me immediately walking out. Tell them your goal is to have this specific car (options, colour etc included), tell them to give their best offer because the hassle of negotiation is an unnecessary annoyance that will cause me to walk away immediately and I find they generally come back to you with immediately good offers that you can take or leave. Not all of them (see earlier post) but enough to know you are likely not going to do much better than the offer that wins. Everytime a couple of dealerships have been far and away the winners. And that's been with Honda, Volvo, Subaru and Nissan.