Shopping involved six different dealers in IL and IN. We were not trading in so the playing field was level.
Deal was made July 31, 2025 at Scherer Mazda in Peoria IL, not local to us by 140 miles, and our car will come in as part of an order they're expecting sometime in September. We were willing to wait so they could order it exactly as we wanted it equipped at a price we wanted to pay, and they were agreeable to doing that. There wasn't a Cypress green one within 350 miles of us anyway at the time, and most other Preferreds I saw online had stickers in the $34,000 range, so I knew that those had numerous options we didn't want. Best advertised deal I saw on one exactly like we wanted was in San Jose CA at $31,020. Can't go that far!
2025 Preferred model, no dealer add-ons, no additional Mazda supplied options at all. (we will supply cargo mats and other things ourselves for far less)
MSRP was $31,850. Destination charge of $1495, and it becomes $33,345 for the sticker price. Most places initial offer to me right at the start was "dealer invoice", which on ours was $32,549. I declined them all, I'd already seen better offers elsewhere farther away. Some dealers wouldn't budge after that, so I took them off the list. Only one called back to check in, still with no movement on price.
After a week of back and forth with two places willing to work with me on ordering a car at a better discount than invoice, nothing got too contentious, the Scherer discount went to $1145 off. I had asked for $1200. We took the $1000 Loyalty rebate we can claim for our 2014 Mazda6, and we elected to take the 1.9 finance deal from Mazda instead of an additional $1000 factory cash back.
We ended up at $31,200 plus tax title transfer of plates and a $367 doc fee I couldn't negotiate down any. It was less than the other place's $385 though.
I was hoping to get 8% off sticker which I was told was a strong deal on this particular car, couldn't get that anywhere, but I got very close to 7% on a bare-bones Preferred. My hope is by ordering now that we also avoided a price increase on the 2026 models which is highly likely.