My favorite episode as well. After this episode when I recently bought a new car I did the research (used the step-by-step of this fighting chance package I found googling) and bought a car on the last day of the month about 1500 below dealer's invoice price after accounting for all hold backs. Felt really good to get some of that money back I have lost to dealerships over the years.

Actuall, that was one of the best episode of This American Life.

Totally. That episode is one of my favorite TALs ever (second to 'Summer Camp', which despite having been done in the 90s is still totally relevant).

In fact, I used a lot of the knowledge from '129 cars' to help with a recent purchase of a Jeep (not from that dealership, sadly). I'm going to write up a blog post about the experience - I learned a lot and it should be helpful to others.

Would love to read the blog post. Any chance I could get an email when its up?

Thanks for posting the link. After listening to this partially on the radio, I searched for it online but couldn't find it since I didn't know what the show was called.

Just finished it, thanks for sharing, really great insight into the industry.