Update 1/31
I've reached out to a total of 35 dealers, both local to me in Washington state, Peoria in AZ, Idaho, Folsom Lk California, Autonation in Littleton, and Autonatinon in Tustin. My initial inquiry spelled out the specifics on the unit I'm looking for (color, 802a group, graphics, bedliner and extenders, forged wheels, heated rear seats, tailgate step, tech pkg).
I've had initial quotes from a minimum of $5k over to 10K over. A few stated they had no allocations left and so got crossed off the list. As one or two others have stated, Autonation in Littleton appears to be following the crowd now and gave an initial price of MSRP + 10K. My initial offer sheet based on an invoice of $67,165.44 and an MSRP as equipped of $72,195 was for $72,000 even. Based on my best estimations of this offer over invoice, dealer holdback of $1583, finance charge rebate of $2300 that gives a net profit of approx $8727 or net 13% over invoice.
I've made counteroffers (based on their reply of MSRP +) to almost all ranging from $74k even to$75,500 depending on how far they were away from me (the further away, the lower my offer, explaining to them the added expense of my travel to them, a few days in the area to ensure there's no major issues w/the unit, then the hotels/gas/food on the drive back home). My rationale to the distant dealers is that in order to EARN my business, their offer + my expenses would need to equal or beat anything I can find locally (which in the greater Seattle area seems to be MSRP + 10k). For the local dealers I state that their offer would need to beat an out-of-state MSRP deal plus my expenses, and I have them links to some of the threads in this forum discussing MSRP deals.
Some tried the old 'we have 2-3 inquiries, we just sold 2 last week at MSRP + 10k, I have other dealers looking for mine at MSRP +...' I'm not in any hurry here and there's no way to validate what they say, so I"m not letting that sway me.
Looks like I may need to give Sanderson in Glendale a try based on the comment above as well.
There is a '17 in my area that the dealer claims has only 60-odd miles on it, a bit higher than I'd like, but I'll take a look tomorrow just to see what kind of shape it's in. It has a few things that weren't on my wish list and stickers for $71565, so I'll see what they want for it. Biggest difference seems to be the stereo (no B&O system) but I'll dig around a bit more to see what exactly differs between a '17 and '18 unit. Build date on the sticker looks to be 4-25-17, so wondering why it's sat around for so long. Looks to be a pretty nice unit.
We'll see where all this goes.