I used to work for company writing software for car dealerships, and there's a lot under those brands that may make you think twice, even about KBB.
Note that this was 2005 - 2011; I haven't kept up with the industry to know if it had changed any, or at all.
I'll talk about the used car market, since the new car market doesn't have that much pricing variation.
There are several pricing companies for cars in the U.S. Don't forget these companies are also for-profit companies, so the prices consumers get to see are generally also inflated a bit (retail price). The actual market price before the dealership acquires the car is known as the wholesale price. Who determines this wholesale price? Well, the prices actually come from car auctions - a place where buyers that either work independently or for dealers go to restock on used car inventory. So if you really, really had the time - go to a car auction (ex: https://www.autoreturn.com/san-francisco-ca/auction-terms/) and get your car at wholesale price.
Now, what does this have to do with pricing guides such as KBB, BlackBook, NADA (nada.com), Edmunds? Well, these companies have people who go to auctions and record the winning bids. All the data they collect ends up being the wholesale price, usually only seen by the dealership. The retail price is then generally a bump of ~$2000 of the wholesale price, depending on the car + other data factors. The kicker is, back in 200x, the data collection at auctions were just samples, all done manually by pencil and paper, and submitted back to KBB, etc. Often times, the data is so incomplete, the pricing guides would all be off quite a bit between each other. There's also regional variations, as KBB is more west coast based, so the prices tend to be higher.
Anyways, that's the surface of things. Also, I don't know if the industry's changed or not. Right when I left that position, KBB and all the other site started to make web enabled API's - we actually used to get shipped a dll w/a data file to integrate into our SaaS product.
So take away - KBB or other pricing guide will still have a higher price than what you can actually get a car for.
Note that this was 2005 - 2011; I haven't kept up with the industry to know if it had changed any, or at all.
I'll talk about the used car market, since the new car market doesn't have that much pricing variation.
There are several pricing companies for cars in the U.S. Don't forget these companies are also for-profit companies, so the prices consumers get to see are generally also inflated a bit (retail price). The actual market price before the dealership acquires the car is known as the wholesale price. Who determines this wholesale price? Well, the prices actually come from car auctions - a place where buyers that either work independently or for dealers go to restock on used car inventory. So if you really, really had the time - go to a car auction (ex: https://www.autoreturn.com/san-francisco-ca/auction-terms/) and get your car at wholesale price.
Now, what does this have to do with pricing guides such as KBB, BlackBook, NADA (nada.com), Edmunds? Well, these companies have people who go to auctions and record the winning bids. All the data they collect ends up being the wholesale price, usually only seen by the dealership. The retail price is then generally a bump of ~$2000 of the wholesale price, depending on the car + other data factors. The kicker is, back in 200x, the data collection at auctions were just samples, all done manually by pencil and paper, and submitted back to KBB, etc. Often times, the data is so incomplete, the pricing guides would all be off quite a bit between each other. There's also regional variations, as KBB is more west coast based, so the prices tend to be higher.
Anyways, that's the surface of things. Also, I don't know if the industry's changed or not. Right when I left that position, KBB and all the other site started to make web enabled API's - we actually used to get shipped a dll w/a data file to integrate into our SaaS product.
So take away - KBB or other pricing guide will still have a higher price than what you can actually get a car for.