Remember, too that there is additional "room" below the employee price for haggling. There are dealer incentives on cars that do not sell. These are not advertised, as they are not customer incentives. Dealers will get an additional $1000 in dealer incentives from DaimlerChrysler for every 100 days that the car sits on the lot. This "kickback" in part covers the opportunity cost, i.e. for every day the car sits in that spot on the lot, a car that would sell could be sitting there. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I bought my 2005 base coupe for $24,300 brand new (25,865 incl. tax & lic). That's significantly below employee cost, and well below the $30K sticker. I got that deal by working two dealers against one another on identical cars. Know what? They both arrived at the same spot, on cars that were sitting on the lot for more than 200 days each. I bought the car from the dealership that was closer to my work, after a week of negotiating on the price. One more tip: leave the dealership after test driving, and negotiate over the phone. This makes it easier to play the dealers off one another, saves you time, and keeps you from getting "trapped" in an office with a bunch of high pressure sales guys. Also remember that you don't have to be an employee to get pricing this low, and don't believe them when they tell you that there is no better deal than the employee cost. Remember too that you can use the same tactic to negotiate up the value of your trade-in, so that you don't have to roll anything over into the new car.