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Buying a Used Car
Alazull
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey everyone! I'm thinking about buying a used car from not-Craigslist for the first time in my life, and could use some advice from those of you more experienced with things like responsibility. So, here we go!
What the hell do I even do to start? I've been looking at Cars.com for hours and found some hits I liked, but I've never been to a car dealership in my life. I'm also thinking about financing the vehicle, and have no idea how to even go about that without leaving myself to the tender mercies of the people trying to sell me the damn car for as much as they can get. No one I know can give me decent advice on what I should know before I even walk into the place, and ain't a damn one of them who can explain what I'm even supposed to do once I'm there besides drop trousers and grab my ankles.
So basically, how do I buy car?
What the hell do I even do to start? I've been looking at Cars.com for hours and found some hits I liked, but I've never been to a car dealership in my life. I'm also thinking about financing the vehicle, and have no idea how to even go about that without leaving myself to the tender mercies of the people trying to sell me the damn car for as much as they can get. No one I know can give me decent advice on what I should know before I even walk into the place, and ain't a damn one of them who can explain what I'm even supposed to do once I'm there besides drop trousers and grab my ankles.
So basically, how do I buy car?
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Once you've narrowed that down to a couple of models (at most), do a bit of research into common faults with the cars you're looking at, make sure none of them are lemons.
Then decide on a price you can comfortably afford, get your car loan from someone other than a dealer, and search around for the best example (re: condition, mileage, service history) in your price range.
Buy that car with the finance you already have arranged, do not get anything else from the dealer. No aftermarket warranties, no paint protection, none of that shit.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
Here it is, for sake of an example.
Where would a good resource for research? I'm really flying by night here and outside of looking up reviews I really don't have a "trusted" source to judge these vehicles with.
Which is a thing you are definitely going to want to do. Civics are douchebag magnets, it seems that 9/10 Civic owners think they are Senna, and their car is an F1 weapon. The remaining 10% are the kind of folk who buy a car on reputation of reliability and then get it serviced twice as much as it needs to be.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
Also, i would suggest going to some local credit unions and securing a loan beforehand. If the dealership ends up with a better loan deal for you, you can go with theirs, otherwise you already have a loan deal your happy with.
If they will let you take the car for a drive, you can line up a deal to take it to a garage you trust to do a quick inspection to see if the car has any issues that could sour your deal.
Do you have a trade in? The general consensus is to deal with the trade in and the sale as separate transactions. Negotiate the price on the car w/o the trade in, then once you have settled on a price, you can negotiate the trade in value for your car.
If you have hot a point where they can't come down on the price anymore, but you still think its too high. you can try negotiating on other things. Like a couple years of free oil changes or free service package, whatever.
Good Luck!
I've helped other people buy used cars, and to the OP's point: One of those times we did research on the cars, took the car in question to a mechanic for an inspection, drove it off the lot and it died within the week. We ended up in a knock down, drag out fight with the dealer and still lost $500 on the deal, though we got the rest of the money back.
I've had a lot of good experiences with Carmax as a used car dealership for a lot of reasons, but our local Carmax is well situated to have a large number of fleet cars from our local tourist and rental services so there is a lot to choose from. Some Carmax locations have nothing. From my own experience, you get a more honest deal since they don't vary their prices after you walk on the lot so you know how much you have to pay right up front, but at the same time you may be able to get a cheaper car from a smaller dealership if you have a lot of haggling abilities.
— Robert Heinlein
1) Go to your bank for financing.
2) Go to your bank for financing.
3) Do not finance through the dealer unless you're buying new and there's a really good reason not to. (e.g. 0% financing, thousands of dollars of rebates. etc.)
4) Financing a car older than 7 years can be difficult, even at your bank.
5) If you can get an account at a credit union, do it. They will usually have better deals and will work with you more on financing vehicles.
Also don't forget to get insurance quotes on whatever car you're looking at before you decide to buy. You don't want to be surprised by a super high rate after you've already bought the car.
I don't think that will be a problem with the HX. It was built and sold as a "high-efficiency" model - the dbags tend to like the base LX and the sporty Si models.
Biggest thing for the OP is to not go to the dealer without financing. If the dealer beats what you get from a local credit union, then great, but it is highly unlikely.
As far as negotiating, go in with as much information as possible. I like the Edmunds TMV as well, which says that car is worth somewhere around $3500-$4000. I definitely wouldn't pay much more than $4K for it.
Those reports only work on stuff that was reported. If the car has a shady history, the report won't help at all.
Exactly, that's reason enough not to buy the car. If there isn't a report, you have no control over what you are spending thousands of dollars on. When you have so much product out there, and there are an insane amount of used cars to pick from in any city of note, there is no sense in picking a car with unknowns.
— Robert Heinlein
Ex government and corporate fleet cars can be good sometimes.
Not rentals. Rental cars are the red-headed step children of the automotive world, and get the everloving fuck thrashed out of them.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
I will second this. Our fleet car is from a corporate fleet and is in remarkable condition for the mileage. Rentals are probably the worst picks to go after, second only to the half rusted truck on cinder blocks.
— Robert Heinlein
NNID and many other services: Athenor or Myridiam // 3DS: 3883-5283-0471
-Utility (how much can I do with the car? Re: carrying friends and family, loading up a piece of furniture, traveling across country, etc)
-Economy (how expensive is it to maintain, fuel?)
-Price (Is it within my budget?)
I don't really care about appearances of the car personally, for me it was more about what I could do with the car and for how much. I ended up getting a Dodge Calibur (though I was also looking at the Yaris and other comparable small hatch backs) due to their utility for what I need in my day to day life.
I would think about what you will use the car for, and what the most valuable things you will need to do are. If you care about how your car looks, include that. If you absolutely must have a specific soundsystem or brand, include that. Just make a set of metrics before you shop and stick to them.
— Robert Heinlein
Personally, Enc, when I went car shopping last year, the #1 item on my list was "Enjoyment." I treat cars as a long term part of my life (try to own one for 7 to 10 years minimum). That's a lot of time spent in the vehicle, and in my opinion, it should be time that you enjoy. Its pretty easy to find that car, too. When you take a test drive in the car, if the test drive comes to an end and you don't have a large smile on your face from the drive, then its not the right car.
Absolutely, everyone will have different metrics. What makes for effective purchasing is figuring out what you values in a car before you get out to the dealerships so you can make an informed decision and rank the cars you encounter based upon what your actual needs are.
— Robert Heinlein
Hmmm... the last car my wife and I bought was an ex-rental that we picked up at Carmax and we haven't had any issues with it.
So while YMMV on that, just because it's an ex-rental shouldn't immediately kick it into "not considering it."
Granted, the car we picked up was a year old and had less than 9k miles on it at the time so it made the decision a bit easier.
I have heard it argued that if you don't walk away at least once, even for a car you really want, you aren't doing it right.
If things dont smell right, walk. Do research on the dealer itself. Not all used car sellers are scammy, but it can be something you will run into.
1. Figure out the car(s) you want. Test drive a bunch, never give your phone number.
2. Figure out what you want to pay for what options and condition.
3. Find the candidates via cars.com, autotrader etc. etc.
4. Mercilessly bargain, pitting car dealers against each other, until you have what you want for the price you want.
Key things to remember:
Car dealers are not nice people while they're dealing cars. They mostly work on commission and live and die by how much they screw you
Car dealer finance people are even worse, as they barely talk to you and their pay is directly commensurate with how hard they screw you
Note that there are nice car dealers, but they probably won't be working the used lot, and will typically work at dealers that don't move a lot on price. I say all this having multiple good friends who have worked in various capacities at dealerships. Regardless of dealership, all had the same stories.
Did you boil it after purchase?
— Robert Heinlein
BattleTech campaign at: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/169696/battletechmegamek-fight-for-gan-singh#latest
You do not have to be particularly assertive, just stick to your price and walk if you don't get it. If you regret leaving you can always come back, though I'd wait 2-3 days and see if they call you. There was a cool Planet Money podcast where an FBI negotiator regales how he bought a car; was pretty cool. Generally you're better off being nice than a dick; only desperate people want to play ball with a dick.
I'd recommend not signing anything as a pre-cursor to negotiations: this is a tactic to get you invested and on the defensive. If your salesman insists say you'll play ball with the sales/floor manager. And the 4-square is an utter con. I think I crossed out that shit and wrote "I'm paying this $X for the car" in each square when some jackhole tried to do that to me (granted I wasn't being real nice there, I just didn't want to deal with shenanigans).
Edit: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/21/167802325/episode-425-an-fbi-hostage-negotiator-buys-a-car grain f salt, someone who has a lot of experience in high-tension negotiations are likely to be able to get a better deal than those who do not.
Yep, you don't have to be a dick, just stick to your guns. You don't owe them anything beyond common courtesy. When my fiance and I were poking around cars, this happened: we had some guy try to give us the hard sell, which I then broke down into all his inconsistencies throughout the sales pitch and asked him if he thought I was an idiot. He replied no, and I asked why he kept treating me like one (lying about things like invoice etc., which take all of 10 seconds to look up on a smartphone). I wasn't mean, but I didn't take any shit.
You may have gotten lucky. It's very rare, but it does happen. I'm a mechanic by trade, and my girlfriend was a used car salesperson for about 6 months, until she couldn't live with herself and quit to go work in a supermarket.
Both of us have stories to tell about rental cars, none of them good. Like I said, you may have gotten lucky, but generally it's best to avoid ex-rental cars like a dirty syringe. Rentals are the cars we use to practice our heel-toe gearshifts, to see how much air we can get over those really big speedbumps, to see how long we can redline the engine for before it throws a fault code, to see what the absolute maximum mp/h per gear is, to practice blues brothers-style handbrake parking...
Like I said, fucked hard and put away wet. Steer clear.
"If you don't know who Kendra is, I'm officially not speaking to you."
In the meantime still using cars.com as a jumping off point to see what my options are, but figure when I get there not to mention that I'd checked them out online and had a specific car in mind, as I figure that's salespeak for, "I will pay whatever you ask for this car."
Thanks for all the advice guys, I feel ready to take this on now. I'll let you all know how it went (hopefully) soon enough!
So you can go in there saying you love black 2001 accords and so long as you have a wall (e.g. $3500 no more) and you can keep to it, then YOU still define the transaction. There are hundreds of black accords out there for you to buy.
Do not go in there fearing you're going to get fucked, that is the path to getting fucked. You go in, you want this car, you have a budget, and if they cannot meet it, you walk. You may have to do this a couple times. It may inform what you think the selling price is, but the methodology is the same.