I am waiting on a 335xi to come in 2-3 weeks from now with an agreement to buy at an amount over invoice. I did not have the invoice of the exact car that I agreed to buy as the options were different than I originally intended to get. After checking the numbers on what the dealer showed me there appears to be a discrepancy between invoice and a wholesale price. The dealer based the price on wholesale (which they told me was equal to invoice) + the amount agreed to above invoice. Comparing this information with what is on edmunds appears to show a $400 - $500 difference. I will be approaching the dealer about this, but do any of you know what the wholesale price is based upon? I have bought many, many cars, but I have not run into this term until now.

Thanks for your input!

This page (http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=224830) has links to the wholesale price. On top of that, there's a $180 training fee, and then local advertising/MACO charges that you usually can't avoid, but can certainly try to. That's how I understand it, anyway, but i'm not a dealer.

$400-$500 sounds like the shipping fee that's usually not included when discussing Invoice or MSRP.

775 is charged to every dealership for delivery. If they had to pull the car in from another dealership, they may have charged you the trucking fee on top of that.

Or you're missing an option, or the price is wrong on edmunds...bmw car builder is the more accurate place to build

What I found when looking for my car is that their invoice/msrp is pretty straightforward, they might have 8% difference or whatever on each base 3 series model. Once you add options, however, things change. The margins on the options vary greatly. You might have 50% margin on one option and 2% on another, and many of the websites to look up invoice just chop that flat 8% off of your MSRP, options or not.

So I'd guess, aside from other fees that should be broken out separately, that you just have a few options that have wholesales closer to the MSRPs than that 8% accounts for. I actually had my dealer print out their form with wholesale/msrp on each option so I could see why things didn't add up like I expected them to.

If they are super honest as they should be, just have them print the invoice right from the vehicle inquiry on the computer. Then everything is on the table.

Went to the site mentioned above and confirmed the invoice price on edmunds matched the wholesale price. What the dealer did not reveal was the $180 training fee and $225 MACO (regional marketing fees) that applied to the particular dealership as mentioned above. This exactly matched the discrepancy between the two numbers.

Thanks for the quick feedback!

Interesting...

So just to be clear:
Wholesale = Invoice + training + MACO?

Do I get it right?

The other way around, zoink...

Invoice = Wholesale + Training + MACO.

When I hear "whole sale" I'm thinking it's a used car term. Wholesale usually refers to what the dealer paid for a trade in our used car.