Car Buying

According to Jeremy Brubaker of uncover the net it pays to go surfing before you go to a dealer. Doing your web research before hand can actually save you thousands on purchasing your next vehicle.

How you might ask?

1. Essential vehicle information is free and accessible.
2. General market value of vehicle can be easily determined.
3. Rebates can be found.
3. Time can saved not running from dealer to dealer.
4. Peace of mind is kept in tact.

It seems that rebates that are offered online by the manufacturer might not always be offered by the individual dealer. According to Brubaker:

“Rebates are a popular tool used most frequently by American auto makers.
For the consumer, an advantage of the incentives can be that banks are willing to loan
retail price and even a little more. The sale price often ends up thousands of dollars
less than the retail price. So if you owe slightly more than your car is worth, you may
be able to roll that negative equity over into a shiny new car. Rebates can be as high as $7000 on GM trucks and $5500 on GM cars. I found dealers reluctant to admit how big the rebate
should have been on my last truck.

The most accurate and up to date rebate information can be found on the manufacturer web sites.”

Further, you can also find out the difference between the retail and invoice price of the vehicle on the net. This gives you a powerful negotiating tool. It is recommended to look at the following sites to find the true retail cost for a vehicle.

autofigures.com
nadaguides.com
kbb.com
consumerguide.com
edmunds.com

Knowledge is a powerful tool when it comes to car buying. Don’t forget to go surfing before you shop!

Buying an American vehicle is a very sensitive issue for some folks. My Grandparents live in Granville, IL. This is a sleepy town in Middle America where the population is under a thousand, and know one is a stranger. Spotting a foreign car is like finding a needle in a haystack - and believe me there are no shortages of haystacks.

These people are often loyal to one dealership and one salesman, and might buy from the same car manufacturer their entire lives. For instance my Grandparents have been buying Chryslers for the last 25+ years. This is just what they do.

So what happens now when cross-ownership of automakers is becoming the norm? Is is still possible to buy a true American vehicle….

An interesting article on msn.auto provides some insight into the subject. [click to continue...]

Do you know anyone who leases a vehicle? Perhaps you lease a vehicle yourself… I have never done it, or felt the need to. For some reason I like the feeling of owning my car. Know one is going to snatch it back at some point! After all, I am paying quite a hefty sum each month toward ownership. If I am paying quite a hefty sum for something I have to give back then it is just like renting a car I suppose, accept for a looooong time.

According to edmunds.com - Leasing became popular in the 1990s because cars became too expensive to buy for many people. Leasing allows a person to drive a brand-new car and make lower monthly payments, thus making the “new-car experience” more accessible to more people. Finally, leasing can offer tax breaks for certain occupations. [click to continue...]

Innovation is an amazing thing. And it is almost like there are two categories of people who have two ditinct ways of reacting to it. We have the open minded interested in innovation and bettering humanity type or the closed minded interested in what worked in the past type. Then perhaps there are those millions that may fall some where in the gray. Damn. I guess black and white comparisons really never work. Right…. anyway….

Back to the point, innovation on the road - think green, think fast, think electric. Yup, take a look at the X1, it will soon be made into a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 - a quarter ton of batteries included.

Here is what money.cnn had to say: Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it’s second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.

The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright’s car? It runs off an electric battery.

Wright isn’t some quixotic loner. He’s part of a growing cluster of engineers, startups, and investors, most of them based in Silicon Valley, that believe they can do what major automakers have failed at for decades: Think beyond the golf cart and deliver an electric vehicle (EV) to the mass market.

Indeed, the race for the new consumer EV has already begun: Just a year ago, Wright was working for his Woodside neighbor Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, a startup that has 70 employees and a major investment from PayPal founder Elon Musk, which is building a mass-market rival to the X1. Wright left, believing he had an even better idea.

Beyond that, startups are forming to equip new “plug-in” hybrids that run almost entirely on their electric motors. And around the country, a handful of other exotic EVs are showing up on the road — including George Clooney’s new ride, a $108,000 commuter coupe that’s just 3 feet wide.

To read more on related subjects visit news.com to find out about Tesla Motors amazing and FAST electric roadster. ( 0-60 in 4 seconds!)