The Stressful Side of Car Buying

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I tend to buy used cars. Let someone else pay for the immediate depreciation. That being said, my '94 BMW (243K miles) recently died and left me stranded. We were, thankfully, able to borrow a car while we shopped for a replacement. It took us two weeks. We shopped on-line ads, researched reliability and repair histories (Edmunds.com is a great pace to start), and found two Volvo S60 at two different dealerships.
On Saturday we decided to "play the game" with the two dealers. My husband LOVES to make dealers sweat. I had to promise not to get emotionally attached to either car. That was the easy part, because I had my heart set on an Infinity G35 coupe that we couldn't quite afford (that will be the next car). I told him that I would walk out with him whenever he said the word. It took us the better part of the day. We walked out of each dealership once, letting them know we were headed to a car we already liked at their competition.
We wound up buying the more expensive of the two cars because it was one year and 30K miles newer. It's a really nice car! If you steel yourself for the game that MUST be played, and give yourself a little time, it is less stressful (and less expensive!).

Linda of FL 9:56AM March 12, 2008

The Consumer Reports New Car Buying guide has lots of great tips, as well as descriptions of the cars themselves.
Normally I'm a used car person myself, but with the new tech coming out (Hybrid, Hydrogen, etc), I think my next one will be a new one.

Ned of WA 11:59PM March 11, 2008

Few tips from the few times I've had to buy cars:
- Eat before you go/bring snacks. A lot of dealers will try to wear you down by keeping you there for a while and let hunger/stress wear you down. Eating before hand helps this
- Walk away at least once - Again their goal is to wear you down, if you don't feel like you're making progress walk away and come back later. I did this when helping an ex-girlfriend buy a car and it worked pretty well
- Comparison shop - get multiple offers for your trade in. I got the dealer to come up $500 on a deal by leveraging another offer. Car Max is good source for this as well but keep in mind the tax situation of money down vs. a trade in. In Ohio, the value of your trade in comes off the total price before sales tax is applied. The higher the trade in value, the better off you are trading it in.

Charles of OH 4:23PM March 11, 2008