My wife and I are shopping for a new car, and I’ve recently become fascinated with the “Four-Square,” a bullshit, quasi-invoice document that car salesmen use to manipulate you. From “Confessions of a Car Salesman”:

As the name implies, the sheet is divided into four sections. When you have a prospect “in the box” (in the sales cubicle) you pull out a 4-square and go to work.

The information about the customer is written along the top together with the make, model and serial number of the car they want to buy. Then the salesman writes the sticker price of the car in large numbers in the upper right square on the worksheet. Michael stressed that the price of the car should be written in large clear numbers to give it a feeling of authority. He added that we should always write “+ fees” next to the price of the car (This includes license fees and sales tax.).

“Good penmanship is essential,” he said. “This makes it harder for them to negotiate. “You’re saying, ‘Mr. Customer, if you want our beautiful new car, this is the price you’re going to have to pay.’”

The other boxes on the 4-square are for the price of the trade-in, the amount of the customer’s down payment, and the amount of the customer’s monthly payment.

“When you negotiate, this sheet should be covered with numbers,” Michael said. “It should be like a battleground. And I don’t want to see the price dropping five hundred dollars at a pop. Come down slowly, slowly. Here I’ll show you how.”