More about buying cars

My friend Stephanie, it seems is trying to buy a car, and has expressed many burning questions about buying a car, and instead of write a blog post in her comments section like a blog-hog, I thought I'd just write up another post to clarify a few things and answer more questions.

What I first decided was why I wanted a new car. Fuel economy. and I looked like a soccer-mom. Probably good for not getting tickets driving through a college town at midnight, but not so much for the 'hey, let's take my car' response from friends. So I concentrated on Fuel economy, and figured not looking like a 45 year-old woman while driving would follow suite. And I think it did. If you like to go camping and hiking or just like destroying the planet, you could go for a 4 wheel drive SUV of some sort. If you actually *are* a soccer mom, then there's a used van waiting for you at the Hyundai Automax in Norman, OK. Old, but works great. Just had the transmission replaced, but you'll have to replace the left tie rod next time you go in for an alignment. I also decided to go with a used car, mostly because I'm cheap. But I've also read it's a better investment to go with a used car instead of a new one (especially if it's certified and all that), since the value of the car drops tremendously as soon as you drive it off the lot. The difference is that a new car will have a warranty and shouldn't be difficult for at least a few years. A used car will most assuredly have a much smaller warranty if any at all, and you'll be paying to take care of it. But your monthly payment will probably be smaller.

Once I decided what I wanted, I got on Autotrader and checked out everything in the area that was within my budget. If I found a car that interested me, I looked it up on consumer reports to check out it's reliability and fuel economy (my parents have an account, and it's awesome). Some years for some models aren't very good, and some are spectacular. After a while, that gave me an idea how good certain models are and what I should be looking for. I also checked out the blue book price for the year and model to see if it was priced well. During all of that, I had a carfax.com account to look up vin numbers. If a car is new with low mileage and dirt cheap, there is probably somehting wrong with it. Carfax.com can tell you how many owners the car has had, and how many miles were last reported on it. They can also tell you if an incident has ever been reported by a DMV or if the manufacturer has canceled the warranty. I'm not sure if it's neccesary, but it's cool.

So by the time my dad came out to Norman to help me check out dealerships, I had a pretty good idea what was available and what was good and possibly in my price range. It happened pretty quickly, but I had done my homework, so I was ready.