In today's market where dealers have limited availability of product, it's a seller's market. Since they don't have a bunch of units on hand, they expect to get top dollar for everyone that leaves the lot, including whatever else they can stuff on top. If you insist on a "deal", wait for a couple of years and see if the chip shortage and other supply chain issues get ironed out so the on-the-lot inventories increase.

Buying services work where the car you want isn't limited availability. It's not "the best" price you might get if you shop your a$$ off, but it's decent. Basically the program has a specific dealer they work with for each brand in your region and they price cars purchased through the service at a pre-set amount, plus pre-set prices for any options you want. I've used one twice in the past, once for an in-stock car and once for a special order unit. I looked into it again when we started shopping for our latest car purchase in December, but it wasn't available for what we wanted. Since sometime in the last couple of years, that buying service no longer has an agreement w/ any Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep dealers. And, coincidently, the local CDJ dealers are extremely aggressive on how they look for ways to bump the margins up on their sales, including charging premiums for buyers who don't use their in-house financing, "out of region purchaser adjustments"... you name it, they probably do it.

As far as what we paid for our Challenger 1320, the simplest way I can put is is... more than I wanted, but less than I could have. We ended up going to an out-of-state dealer 120 miles away, but that was primarily because nobody closer had anything available optioned how we wanted it. We could have special-ordered a 2022 for less, but you can't get a 2022 1320 w/ a back seat now, which was a deal killer for us. Let's just say it was an "interesting" experience.