Professional Resources For Car Finding
Can an auto mechanic help me with my car purchase?
If you know an auto mechanic, it's often very smart to bring them into the car purchase process so they can do the inspection, especially if you're looking at a used vehicle. A mechanic can often tell you things that they have seen coming through on vehicles that are similar in nature, maybe alert you on certain bugs that need to be worked out, or things you might need to address in the first few years of ownership. A mechanic might also know about certain problems that have been identified by seeing them come through his or her shop quite often. A mechanic can put you in a better space to be more qualified and more researched before you go into the negotiation process for a car purchase.
How would an auto mechanic help me with my new or used car purchase?
Using an auto mechanic to help you buy a used or new vehicle is a smart move. It can add some time and some cost to the process, but it does buy you a lot of peace of mind. In essence, you're going to be asking the mechanic to look over the vehicle. If it's a used vehicle, a mechanic will give you an idea of what sort of maintenance it might be needing in the near future. If it's a new vehicle, a mechanic will identify design flaws, things that you may need to work on as soon as you buy the vehicle. It's very important to get a mechanic's view on all the different vehicles that you're looking to drive. Lastly, a mechanic could be well aware of an inherent problem or a little bug that needs to be fixed in that vehicle before it can be considered to be exceptionally reliable. For example, if a certain vehicle is known to have a problem with headlights going out very often, a noise in the transmission, brakes that need to be replaced on a much more rapid basis, or tires that wear out quicker because of the suspension set up. These are things that you should know before you actually make that car purchase.
How can "Consumer Reports" help me with my car purchase?
With regards to professional resources for finding a car, ‘Consumer Reports' is a company that's been around for a very long time. ‘Consumer Reports' has a mission in life to provide their readers with unbiased, clean reviews of all different products, from toasters, microwaves through to blenders. A very big part of their business is analyzing and providing data and advice on the car-buying process.
How can "Consumer Reports" help me find the right car?
The biggest advantage of using Consumer Reports in car purchases is that it's an unbiased clean source of information and reviews using the experience of people who actually owned the vehicle or considered it. So, it does give you the chance to pre-own the vehicle if you will, and identify its advantages and disadvantages.
What is a "new car buying site"?
A new car buying site is a source of lots of information as well as can actually bring you to the purchase process. It provides a great amount of detail, reviews, content, price and spec information to help guide you to the vehicle you are interested in. Most importantly, the site then provides you the opportunity to have a dealer in your local area contact you with pricing on the vehicle that you narrowed your search down to. It's a good one stop shop to get you in the process of actually driving the vehicle and deciding if it meets your needs.
How can a car buying site help me find the right car?
When considering a new vehicle, it makes sense to go to a new car website for doing your research. All the information on all the vehicles is going to be there. You're able to do a lot of back-to-back comparisons of certain vehicles. Lots of different tools, calculating tools, finance tools, to really get you finely tuned into which vehicle you should consider. Most of the sites are then going to have a section which basically says "Click here for a quote", and that will get your name and information and phone number to a dealer in your local area. They can contact you how you see fit, whether it's through email or over the phone, and set up an appointment to drive the vehicle, give you a price, and hopefully get you further down that purchase process.
What is "Kelley Blue Book" and how can it help me find the right car?
Kelley Blue Book pricing is really the standard, if you will, or at least the starting point in a lot of used car negotiations as well. People can look up what the price should be both on retail and wholesale side to get an idea what they should sell the vehicle for if they have one to move before they buy a new car or what the approximate used value should be if they were looking to buy one in the market place as well. It by no means is the absolute, definitive price of the vehicle because there is so much more at play. The market you're in, the climate you're in, the relative quality of that vehicle. Or the maintenance schedule that the vehicle has been held to. So there is a lot of other factors but it's a good starting point for them, negotiating with your buyer or seller what the right price should be. Kelley blue book has become the "de facto bible" if you will of car pricing. On the new car side, they are very good at compiling all of the new car pricing in regards to feature levels, trim levels, what that's going to add to the base price. How much the vehicle is going to cost you to own overtime. There side collects a ton of traffic on people that have come in, look up their particular vehicle, get a number from, as their suggestion, as to what the price of the vehicle should be. And then that number then goes into their listing for the vehicle when it's suppose to be sold, or written on the for sale sign if you will. They are a great resource to give you that guideline of what approximately what the market value of your vehicle to be sold.
What is "IntelliChoice.com"?
With regards to professional resources for finding a car, IntelliChoice.com is a website which has been around for twenty one years now, which makes it a real old man in the Internet automotive space. IntelliChoice.com endeavors to provide cost of ownership information for every vehicle on the road. Cost of ownership is very different from cost of purchasing. When people think about what a car is going to cost to drive, they usually think of their monthly payment, but there are many more factors at play; fuel costs, insurance costs, maintenance, repair and depreciation. These are all the things that are not very exciting to think about when you're looking at a new car, but are things that are going to become very important to you after you've owned the vehicle for some time. This is especially true when you are potentially thinking about trading or selling it, and you find out that you should have considered another vehicle that gets better fuel economy, better insurance ratings, and all the things that add up over time from owning the vehicle. So, cost of ownership and therefore IntelliChoice.com is becoming a much more important consideration.
How do I use Intellichoice.com to help me buy a vehicle?
My best advice to people who are just starting the vehicle purchase process on a site like Intellichoice.com is to follow three key points. Number one, use a site like Kelly Blue Book to identify what the price of their vehicle should be, the one that they are looking to buy as well as the one they are going to be selling, in order to make room for new one. Then go into some of the more specifically enthusiast sites like Edmonds, or Motortrend,com, or CarAndDriver.com to find out what's new and hot in the industry and help you understand some of the emotion and sex appeal attached to a new vehicle. Then the last step before you go to the auto mall and drive the vehicle is to come to a site like Intellichoice.com to fill your revolver with ammunition, if you will, because the dealer is going to be wanting to really touch your emotional side and push you straight into any vehicle. You want to make sure you have hard, fast, cost-of-ownership information at the ready to make sure that, if the emotions match the economics, then you've got a good vehicle purchase.
What are some auto information resources for buying a car?
Well, one of the great things about the advent of the internet was that it allowed a lot of information to be nicely located for people to do their research. When the internet first came on, it was much more focused on pricing -- "let me know what a good price is that I should negotiate to when I go to buy a car". Well, the dealers and the salespeople know those numbers, too, so that really isn't where the key is. The key now is websites that are actually compiling data and doing some of the work for a person before they actually go into the dealership and have all that information already when they go in to take on the salesperson. Many of these resources would be websites like intellichoice.com, kellybluebook.com, edmunds.com, these are all sites that have taken the car buying process, gone through all the data you need, distilled that down, collected it in ways that are easy to read, easy to understand, and given you the ammunition you need before you go into the car dealership.
How can online resources help me find the right car?
With regards to professional resources, online resources are good in helping you find the right car as they can do the homework for you. When the internet and its information first came on, there was a lot of pricing information available. However, it could still take days and weeks to compile all of it to get it into a good state so that you're doing fair comparisons among vehicles, making sure that the data is equal. These new websites do all that work for you. They online resources really take a lot of blood and sweat out of the process, allowing you to just go in and negotiate smartly.
What is a "car buying service"?
Car buying services are usually things defined as anything that's part of a membership with an organization. Like the AAA has a car buying service or maybe a credit union or a bank or something like that. Any association that you are already a member of.
What are the pros and cons of a car buying service?
The advantages of a car buying service is that they'll often go into a select group of dealers in your local area and prenegotiate pricing, prenegotiate some of the financing. Obviously, you still need to provide your personal information to see exactly what you'll get, but they'll set up a lot of the early footwork, if you will, to make sure you're getting a fair shake right from the very beginning. The flip side to that is that if things have been prenegotiated there's a good chance that it's not the actual bargain, deepest price. There's probably still available negotiating room in there. Some people just like to have that comfort of knowing that a lot of the work's been done for them in a professional manner, and it'll be less confusion and potential chaos in the process later.
