Another trick in the industry, is the "price the dealer pays". This is mischievous, as the dealer does indeed pay that price for the car. However, they receive incentives quite often, in terms of kickbacks for sales made. So they dealer can gleefully say "This is what we paid for the car", whilst in parallel not indicate "Well, we received $5k as a kickback from the manufacturer later".
The manufacturer often also has monthly blitzes, discounts of the month, which the dealer will not really inform you of. After all, that's extra profit if they can trick you into paying full price.
In the early days of the internet, there used to be excellent services to discover all the discounts the dealers had, so you could a proper assessment of their actual cost. Thus, you'd be able to haggle with both eyes open.
For Canadians, The Automobile Protection Association (APA), https://apa.ca/ is legit, and offers such a service for a fee. Not sure what Americans might have. Or who to trust there.
Knowing what the car actually costs the dealer, is immense power when negotiating.
A more accurate way of saying this is that the dealer is using incentive money to buy points (as is available in the mortgage market). You can ask dealer to apply that to the price of the vehicle instead. Many dealers already offer that kind of choice in their advertisements already (cash bank or no interest financing). Which way works out better for you depends on the terms of the loan etc. It's all the same to the dealer though.