Deciding on a Car

The first step to buying a car is figuring out what you want.

There are plenty of resources both printed and online to help you narrow down your search. My favorite magazines are Consumer Reports and Car and Driver. These resources will help you consider high level factors like price range, safety ratings, typical maintenance costs, residual value, comfort, etc.

Once you've narrowed down your search to a few specific makes and models, go to the manufacturer's website and pick out the trim level, equipment packages, and accessories you might be interested in. These days, most sites allow you to build a car and find out the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) to get a ballpark price range. Keep in mind that using the FindtheBestCarPrice negotiating techniques should help you significantly beat that price!

You can take it a step further and visit websites that track and compile available statistics on dealer costs and incentive programs. These services are useful, but keep in mind manufacturers purposely conceal their internal cost structures and it's a constantly changing marketplace with only incomplete data available to the public. Some resources worth checking are:

Free Auto Incentives and Car Cost Research:

The numbers you will find on these sites are useful to help determine your target price range (usually somewhere between invoice price and MSRP, but can be lower!). Once you get a ballpark, do not get hung up on specific fees and rebates. It can be quite a hassle researching and in the end you're playing into the dealer's shell game. They shift around fees and rebates into different categories to try to confuse you. When you use FindtheBestCarPrice negotiating techniques, you will ask the dealer to give you a total price that beats their competitors. In the end, they can shift around fees and incentives all they want for "dealer prep", documentation, "cash back", and mud-flaps, but you only need to be concerned with the bottom line and getting it as low as possible.

Once you decide what kind of car you want you can...