So we hadda buy a truck, because we have this travel trailer and my old S10 won't haul it - it damn near destroyed the tranny last time I dragged it 45 miles. Plus, the S10 is dying, and I refuse to spend more money on it after 187,000 miles.

We bought a Chevy. We looked at Fords - I've always liked Ford trucks - but Ford didn't want to sell us a truck. Well, they SAID they did, but they made us an offer and that was it, full stop. It didn't meet our budgetary requirements. We thought about it for a while and checked with Chevy, and Chevy wanted to sell us a truck. We got a lot more amenities (Satellite Radio, dual zone climate control, spray in bed liner, bed extender, OnStar, Flex Fuel, Advanced Fuel Control, etc, etc) for $1000 less total payback.

Something I learned while shopping at Ford. No matter which "incentive" we took, the total payback was within a couple hundred dollars of being the same, with the exception of one plan that was considerably more (almost $1k more). Take the incentives along with the offered interest rate (close to what I can get through my credit union, and I have good credit), the total payback was, say, $35k. Take the incentive interest rate, you give up two of the incentive rebates, total payback was, say, $35.2k. Take a DIFFERENT set of incentives and the offered interest rate, same damned thing. Basically, you can get away with a fairly inexpensive truck (like, 20% off) if you have cash; otherwise you'll end up paying back close to MSRP minus the 'global' incentive. Calculate total payback by multiplying the monthly payment times the term of the loan - ie, if they quote you $427/month for 60 months, you'll pay them $25,620 by the time you're done.

And now the kicker - two weeks later, Chevy's doing the "employee pricing" PLUS the $5k rebate. *sigh*. Of course, I don't know if you get employee pricing AND the 0% plan we went with; if so, that would have saved us $3k. Ah, well, when you have a timeline, you pay for it.