A Car Buying Story, Part Two: How?
June 30th, 2011 | 
Author: A Car Buying Story, Part Two: How?
So how do I buy a car once I know what I like? There are several options, plus a few payment options as well. It can make quite difference both money-wise and regarding your own satisfaction. This is what I have considered:
Buying a new car
This is the easiest option of course. It has many advantages, and a single disadvantage: you pay the price for all those conveniences. In the end this is what I did, for the following reasons:
I don’t have to think how the previous owner maintained the car.
New car should be problem free for a few years longer than a used car.
Warranty is usually 3-5 years, or 60K-100K km, so you get to use it longer. Of course with the new car, there are less chances that you’ll actually use it, but you never know.
If you’re financing, you get a better interest rate. It ranges from 0% to 4% (currently for this year’s models), while if you’re buying a used car and want to finance using bank loan, the best you can get is currently about 8%.
If you’re buying replacement insurance — it’s usually too expensive for the car older than 5 years. With the new car you can get it for a fair price for the first 3-5 years.
Once you decide what you want, it’s easy to buy it: you walk into the dealership and within couple of hours you have the car. And in my situation that was beneficial since I did not have the car. Otherwise, this convenience can actually work against you.
You can get exactly the model you want, including color and other little things.
Buying a new car in a rural area
This is something I’ve heard of but haven’t explored in full. The idea is to go out of the city to dealerships with smaller sales numbers, and try to negotiate better price with them. Now, I’m not the best negotiator, so I wasn’t really counting on this option, but I tried anyway. I went 150km away and
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