Believe it or not, some salespeople will tell you that the mats in the plastic bags in the trunk didn’t come with the car but were added by the dealership. Then they’ll try to charge you for them. If you suspect that’s what’s happening, check the window sticker. If mats are listed on the sticker, their price is already included in the MSRP—and the dealer is trying to rip you off.

Nitrogen in Tires

Nitrogen in tires used to be a big thing 10 to 15 years ago. The advantage of nitrogen in tires is, pure nitrogen is a larger molecule than what you find in regular air, so it doesn’t seep out of your tires as quickly. That means your tires stay properly inflated longer, which means your tires last longer. Plus, you don’t have to monitor inflation as closely or refill them as often.

This is true—as long as the nitrogen is properly installed in the first place. The problem is, to install nitrogen, all the air has to be completely sucked out of the tires and then replaced with nitrogen. Otherwise, you’ll have a mixture of air and nitrogen in the tire, and the air will seep out, defeating the whole purpose of adding nitrogen. Car dealerships love shortcuts, so some of them don’t bother with sucking out all the air. They just take the tires down a little bit and then fill them back up with nitrogen. Or they don’t put in any nitrogen at all, tell you they did, and charge you for it. How would you know?

Unless you’re a professional driver using your car on a racetrack, where exact tire pressures really matter, I’d say skip the nitrogen. Or have a mechanic you trust install it so you can verify it’s really there.

Super Bling Protecto-Coat

If you want to make your car look like it went to a VIP party, this is the product for you. Paint and interior protectants are the Mac Daddy of all dealer add-ons, the cash cow that turns losing deals into profitable ones. MotorTrend doesn’t have the bandwidth to list all the different products out there, but some of the best known are Adam’s Polishes Graphene Ceramic, Cerakote, Chemical Guys Carbon Force, Simoniz GlassCoat, and Xzilon.

The first thing most customers say when I mention a protectant is, “I can wax my car myself.” These are not waxes. Some of these products use nanotechnology and are made from ingredients like graphene, which is 200 times stronger than structural steel on a microscopic level. These protectants don’t require a long, laborious afternoon and a lot of elbow grease to apply. And if a bird poops on your newly waxed car and it eats through the paint, who you gonna call? The company that made the wax? They don’t care.

They also aren’t sprays, like Scotchguard, which are fine products, but they don’t come close to providing the level of protection the coatings do. One major advantage is dealer-applied coatings come with a warranty, which you won’t get with a wax or a spray from the store. In some cases, the warranty lasts five years, in some cases it’s a lifetime. But the best part about these protectants is, they really work in my experience.

I’ll give you an example. I sold a car with a beige leather interior to a woman whose job required her to do a lot of driving. She was concerned about having a light-colored interior because she drank a lot of coffee and tended to spill it. I sold her on a protectant (which I won’t name, but it was one of the five listed above) and she bought the car. About six months later she brought the car back in and asked me if I could do anything about her interior.

When I opened the door and looked inside, I was flabbergasted. The interior looked like someone had taken an entire pot of coffee and splashed it all over the car. The seats were stained, the door panels drenched, the carpet soaked—even the headliner had coffee on it! I told her we’d give it a try.

The typical warranty for these products says that the company will first try to repair the damage, be it contaminants on the paint or stains on the interior. If they can’t do that to the customer’s satisfaction, they’ll repaint that section of the car or replace the upholstery—for free.

When we got her car back a week later, I was astonished. It looked brand new. The protectant had kept the coffee from penetrating the surfaces of the interior, and they were able to clean it all off. The woman was as happy as could be. And it sold me on the product, as well.

Here’s the catch: It has to be properly applied to work. Sometimes vehicles get sold that haven’t had the paint protectant applied—either through an oversight or because it had just arrived on the lot and there wasn’t time to apply it—but the customer still got charged for it. If that happens, you still have the protection of the warranty, because you paid for it. But having the protectant and the warranty is what you want. You can tell if the protectant is there just by running your finger over the paint. It should feel smooth as glass.

Finally, just because a dealer tries to stick you with $2,545 for extras you didn’t ask for doesn’t mean you have to pay for them. You can have the add-ons removed if you don’t want them or negotiate the price down to something reasonable. Because $1,999 is still too much to pay—even for Super Bling Protecto-Coat!