The day before yesterday we took a big step and almost empied out the savings and checking accounts for a new wedgewood blue Eddie Bauer Expedition. We had a great little '03 Escape XLT with 22k which would have probably served fine for many many years to come except the cockpit was a little tight on my oversized frame. We are going to be driving back and forth from KS to TX a lot so we decided to get something a little bigger. I visited every dealership within about a 75 mile range (4 of them) and after the first one I found that there were only a few EB Expeditions in blue in the state of KS. Beggers can't be choosers this late in the game so I guess we were lucky to find a blue one at all. Two of them (including ours) were loaded with a whole bunch of options I wouldn't have ordered if I were having it built. One was pretty bare with no options. Anyhow I got the same story from every dealer about the price being the lowest it had ever been and they could not deivate from the Ford family price. The trade in prices really sucked. A couple of the dealers admitted to using something called a "blackbook" of trade in values what ever that is. If it exists it is far below the Kelly blue book trade in values. One dealer even wanted an extra $200 to drive to Kansas City to get a blue one from a dealer there. Anyway to make a long story short, I read upside down and backwards and found out which dealer had the vehicles. We drove to KC and found the dealer that had two of the three found in KS. Actually the dealer was across the river into Missouri but close is good in horseshoes and handgrenades. We ended up getting Kelly blue book for the trade in and the sales tax was included in the price so we came out better there than the best deals offered at the other dealerships. The point is; I had some newspapers saved for the basement wood burning furnace that went back to the first of the year. I dug some of the Sunday editions out and compared the prices from January '05 to March '05 with the present prices for new vehicles at the local dealer. The sale prices then and the Ford family employee pricing are not that much different. It seems there were a lot of factory and dealer incentives back then and if you figure in that you were getting a little better trade-in then the prices are not that much different. Car salesmen don't have a lock on lying to people but I sure felt I got my share before I was able to find a deal.