Well, it's all done now!
A lady friend of ours at church had recently bought a new vehicle. She was very pleased with her whole experience and so recommended a specific salesman at another dealership. After our original place blew up our deal in F&I, we were planning on visiting this other dealership anyway. But now we had a good recommendation for a specific salesman, too.
We closed the deal and picked up our new ride yesterday. We did pay
slightly more than what the salesman at that first dealership where we had the problems had quoted us, but THIS dealership's F&I guy did not try to add $3,750 to our quoted price (in fact, didn't try to add ANY to the quoted price!).
I don't feel bad about the price I actually paid being a little bit more than what the first dealership quoted, because after it all fell apart there at that dealership, I realized they never intended to honor that price they gave us anyway. Here at THIS dealership, when we settled on a price, that was it - it was settled (as it should be).
Here at THIS dealership where we ended up buying, we spent probably a couple of hours with the salesman. Yeah, that's kind of a long time, but heck, I'm retired and the grandkids aren't close by, so what else do I have to do?
And he was a nice, easy-going guy. Seemed like every 15 minutes or so, he would just drop off a few hundred bucks. So I figure it was time well spent!
So after finishing with the salesman, he took us to the F&I guy. Now of course, the F&I guy did try to sell us his products, too (GAP insurance, extended warranty, maintenance plan, interior/exterior car-care products, etc.). He seemed like a nice guy also, so I politely gave him about 30-60 seconds to give me his pitch for each item (since I had no intention of buying any of them, I figured not much reason to talk about them). Then after he made his (brief) offer of each item, I politely said: "No, thanks." Then he immediately moved on to his next item. No pressure at all. We spent less than 5 minutes total going over all of the products he was trying to sell, then we moved on to the paperwork for the vehicle. He printed out the sales & finance paperwork and gave it to me. I took a couple of minutes to look it over (and lo and behold, all the numbers were exactly the same as what were on the salesman's sheet!). I signed all the papers there, and we were done. In and out of the F&I guy's office in about 15 minutes, and that included a few minutes of chit-chat about kids & grandkids, etc.
So we ended up buying the exact same model, color, engine, trim level and everthing there at THIS dealership that we almost did at the first dealership, and for a very good price.
As it turned out, my wife was unavailable when the car was ready to be picked up, so the salesman said he would drive it the 25 miles up to my place out in the country if I wanted him to. So I told him sure, bring it on. I told him I'd even make it easy on him - I would drive him back to the dealership so he wouldn't have to bring an extra driver with him (figured it would also give me a chance to have him go over some of the many features of the "infotainment" stuff). But it ended up that instead of us talking about the car as I drove him back to the dealership, we spent the whole half-hour drive talking about kids, jobs, where we grew up, etc. Had a very nice little non-business type visit.
So, a great car-buying experience. Exact vehicle we wanted, very good price, no high pressure negotiations, no funny business with the numbers, quick and simple in F&I, and vehicle delivered to my place 25 miles away. Just the way it should be!
If anyone's interested and in the market for a new vehicle in the far North Dallas area, we dealt with David Perry at El Dorado Chevrolet in McKinney.
Thanks to everyone with all your specific recommendations. Apparently there is a disproportionate number of scum-bags in even the NEW car sales business. So I'm glad to hear that others have had good experiences as well.
For anyone reading this thread that is in the market for a new vehicle, pay attention to the recommendations from the various folks in this thread. I've found that personal recommendations will be a great help to you, as opposed to just walking cold-contact into a dealership and dealing with the first guy who meets you at the door.
So now I've got to go start reading the manual to try to figure out what the heck ALL these BUTTONS are for!