June 30, 2004

New Car

When I fly out to California in a week, I'll be looking at buying my first car. I'm looking for something small, gets good gas mileage, and costs about $20000 or less. I'm also planning on keeping the car for 5+ years so reliability is also important. So because I want to keep the car along time and because I don't really know that much about cars, I'm going to get a new car rather than a used one. I don't want to have to deal with something going wrong with used car and then being overcharged for repairs because I don't know what's actually wrong with it.

Right now I'm leaning towards the VW Golf or Jetta. I'm also considering the Honda Civic, Toyota Prius (if I can find one), and the Hyundai Elantra. I really like the feeling of the inside of the Jetta, but the Civic gets better gas mileage and I think generally has less problems than the Jetta. My friend Angie just bought an Elantra and the most enticing thing about that to me is the fact that it has a 5 year bumper to bumper and 10 year powertrain warranty which is longer than the warranty on the other cars. One other plus for the VWs is that they come with a CD/tape player and the tape player will be convenient for connecting my iPod.

Like I said my car knowledge is rather limited, so if anyone has any advice for me on makes/models or advice on negotiating a good deal when I'm actually buying the car please leave a comment.

Posted by Jason at June 30, 2004 11:52 AM
Comments

First, I would take a close look at "certified pre-owned" cars. Cars depreciate very quickly at first, so you can often find great deals on 2-3 year old cars. I'm not sure how good the warranties are, though. I think most are 2-3 years.

Second, I recommend checking out The Motley Fool for buying and negotiating advice:

http://www.fool.com/car/car.htm

Posted by: Jeff Hunter on July 1, 2004 01:07 AM

VW's depreciate VERY quickly (so do SAABs, etc.). I second Jeff's recommendation re: certified, pre-owned. But, I too bought a new car for many of the same reasons and got the extended warranty out to seven years, 75,000 miles.

The best place you can go when you're looking to buy a car is edmunds.com, I think. It has the dealer cost to everything, and puts power in your hands. If you know their cost you know what you can pay. It also has a LOT of good articles on how not to get screwed at each stage of the game, etc.

Print out the sheets from edmunds.com and take them in. Let the dealers see you with them. Tell them "look, I'm educated and I'll make this a very quick transaction for you, but I won't stand to be screwed." Be a hard-ass. The dealer I chose respected my knowledge and knows that I've sent at least ten of my friends their way since buying the car.

Be a hard-ass. Over the length of your loan (etc.), it could save you $5,000-10,000. Seriously.

Posted by: Erik J. Barzeski on July 1, 2004 10:34 AM

Another great site is www.carbuyingtips.com. The site has some good info, and most useful is the spreadsheet that allows you to calculate a fair offer. All you have to do is plug in the numbers you get from Edmunds or cars.com. Happy car buying!

Posted by: Angie on July 5, 2004 12:52 PM