Do you play poker? Are you any good? A good poker player knows how to read his or her opponent. You can’t rely on getting good cards to play your hand each time. A successful poker player also reads the other person’s mind, and goes in strong if he senses a weak hand. It’s a science, just see how many repeat players make it to the final table at poker tournaments.

Where am I getting with this? Well, selling cars is like a game of poker for some car dealers. They try to read your thoughts, cater to your doubts and profit from your ignorance on matters related to car buying. If you are a person just looking to lowest car price, they can easily sell you a new car at the lowest price you think possible, and then make money giving you a low price on your trade-in, a high interest on your car loan, extra costs for your service plan etc. Car dealers practice talking to customers every day and they have gotten pretty good at their game.

So what is your best defense? Preparation of course! You can find out your dealer’s poker hand before even talking to the dealer. While they don’t know what you can afford, or how much you know about car buying, you can know everything about their business, the car, and go in knowing what a bargain looks like. Check out my insider tips here: Car buying tips

With all the knowledge you will find out at the link above it will make you a great mind reader at car dealers.

As far apart as those 2 worlds seem to be, they are becoming closer than anyone can imagine. Before internet or even during the time when most people in communities could not read, mankind “educated” themselves before doing anything new by asking around their friends and peers. Well fast forward a few hundred days or years, today this natural tendency has manifested itself into online social communities, and more and more people are turning to these communities before they finalize on buying a particular type of car. Car dealers and manufacturers have noticed this trend and are creating online communities addressing this medium to win people’s trust in their brand.

Smart move car dealers!! Kudds to the dealers who are taking on awareness of brand approach.

Here is an excellent article by a web author to drive home the point. He pretty much lists examples of car makes using this trend and reaping benefits of this new channel.. GM, Saturn, Chevy

Don’t worry car dealers are not going to loose their shirt on this one.

Yes, there are some ways to get a free car for those of us qualified and driven to get one.

Just type in “Free Car” in Google and you come across many companies offering you a free car for real. The catch is usually that your car will look like a race car, filled with advertisements on the outside.

I am sure many of you will say if its free I don’t care what it looks like, show me how I can get one.

Well here is how they qualify you for a free car:

• You need to live in certain cities. (Typically only the big cities.)
• You will need to drive the car, in a populated area for X hours a week.
• –This maximizes the visibility of their advertisements on the car to people.
• You typically may not be given a car, but rather loaned one.
• – Keeps their investment as little as possible
• You may be responsible for your own car maintenance. ($50/mth)
• You may be responsible for your own car insurance. ($50/mth)
• You may be responsible for your own gas. ($50/mth)

I believe this is an excellent opportunity for people with people who drive around the city a fair bit. Carriers or Pizza delivery personal.. this might be just the thing for you.

If you are still interested in a free car, check out some of the websites out there offering this service. An example is FreeCarMedia .

Good luck, and tell me anything new you find out about free cars.

ps. No, free cars are usually not BMWs like the picture suggests, expect the smaller, cheaper cars, unless you get real lucky.

This innocent question has been misused to charge customers higher for cars.

Here is how the misuse happens.
Lets say you can afford to pay $300 a month on your new car.
Great!
1) With a car loan at 5% a year over 5 years you can afford to pay the car dealer about:$14,600 (Before taxes)
2) With a car loan at 7% a year over 5 years you can afford to pay the car dealer about: $13,900 (Before taxes) for the same car.

A) There have been cases reported where the car dealer sells the buyer a cheaper car at $13,900 and give the the buyer a higher interest loan at $300 a month. Why? Because the dealer also makes more money selling the higher interest loan to the buyer.

B) Another method that has been used is the dealer gives the buyer a big discount on the price of the car, only to set the buyer up with a higher interest loan. Note the dealer makes up for the “discount” by increasing his or her commissions on the car loan.

C) Another variation of this I have seen is when the car dealer tells the buyer, at the time of closing the deal, that they want to give something to the buyer for “free” at the same monthly payment. How do that do that? Well, they give you $1000 worth of say undercoating “free” then they drop the interest rate on your loan before you sign the papers, and use the extra loan money you can get for the same monthly payment to pay for your “free” gift.

Moral of the story. Never ever negotiate a car deal with a car dealer thinking about how much you can afford to pay each month. You need to do that calculation at home first. I even encourage you to get a pre-approved loan for a website or your bank before you talk to a dealer so you go into a dealership only ready to negotiate the other aspects of car buying.

Here is a great auto loan calculator to figure this out for yourself.

There is a proven gadget that will improve your car’s gas mileage. Its called the fuel miser and it works by alerting you to change your driving habits. There are many other additives and contraptions I have heard of that claim to do that, but this fuel miser devise comes with good references. Check out the video below for details.

Of course you don’t need to fork out money if getting better mileage its just a matter of changing your driving habits. You can get better gas mileage by following some basic driving rules. Check out a great article about gas conscious driving here.

I was shocked that i actually was able to save so much on my 30k service. I called my neighborhood Toyota dealer and got a really high quote. Since I am all about shopping around, I called a few more places and was amazed to see that car service companies like Precision Tune, Quality Care etc were able to beat that price by over $200. I decided to investigate why there was such a big price difference, and went online to see what car maintenance  work was really required as per the manufacturer’s guidelines. Got some real good information from their site. It turned out that I only need to do the very basic care, and a whole bunch of inspections at this 30k milestone. Armed with this information I re-called the non-dealer car service providers and the best quote came to $60 + tax.  Of course the inspection revealed i had to flush my steering fluid with cost me an additional $50, but hell, I saved more than what I was initially quoted.  On further investigation i found that with the first quote they were going to do a whole lot more  maintenance than what is necessary.  Moral of the story , it pays to question quotes, and shop around.

Don’t tell me… I know you would most likely go for the green car! How did I know? Well that seems to be the national consciousness of late. You can also see that in car buying trends published ever now and then. Car dealers are also aware of this fact and are offering gas card incentives to compensate the green envy of the non green cars. Check out this article that summarizes some really neat research on how women picking men with green cars over any other color cars. Here is the article.
ps.. for those rare few of you wondering what green car is.. we are talking about hybrid cars.

Wow such a lofty concept.. but just like perfect anything,…it’s a different definition perfection for every person. Irregardless, the process of deciding on anyone’s perfect car is the same. You need to answer some very basic questions. In order of this suggested priority.

1) What can I afford?
a. Determine a price range for the desired car. If you plan to get a loan find out what monthly loan you can afford.

2) Lease or own?
a. If you plan to lease, you can choose car makes of lesser quality, since you wont have to worry about bearing the cost of repairs or ownership once the car gets old.

3) What car features are a must have?
a. Moonroof? 4WD? Super Gas milage? Standard, automatic?

4) Car quality
a. A good quality make costs more than the lesser quality makes for the same features.
b. If you plan to own, its better to spend a little more for a better quality make, as you will land up spending less in the long run. If you plan to lease, see #2 above

5) Availability of bargains, incentives, special loans etc
a. The more you have to spend, the more features, or quality you can get for the same amount of money. Eg. If you are choosing between a Honda civic and a Toyota corolla, go for the Honda civic if they are giving you some specials with the purchase.

6) Find out if you have any car purchase associated discounts on car loans, extended warranties or service plans if you are in the market for these things.

7) Finally the most important decision maker to find your perfect car is what you feel you are getting for the money you are spending. Sometimes its ok to spend a little more than you are comfortable for a quality product that will keep you happy with your purchase.

For more tips on how to buy cars at a super low price check our my cars below invoice section.

One of my friends recently bought a new car and  shopped  around via her phone  having used her  buddy’s car buying service (ps.  her buddy being me.)  . She told the dealers that her best buddy is in the car business and that she was looking to only buy her car if she can get the car below invoice price. After two car dealers rejected her proposal, the third one who had 3 cars that she liked agreed to her proposal. Of course she did go around to multiple dealerships test driving various vehicles, and had determined exactly what she wanted before doing her telephone shopping. What surprised me was the ease of her getting the friends and family discount once she made it clear that she knew how the car dealer insider deals are all about, and that she qualifies. Kuddos to you buddy. (I have been asked to keep her name anonymous. )

Moral of the story: If you have a friend or family member in the car business, definitely have them shop a car for you, or at lease use their leverage of being an auto dealer industry  insider to get you an awesome deal.

Not quite! The only thing my Lexus car dealer let me put on my credit card the last time i purchased a new car was the tax. The rest of the amount had to be paid by other means. Anycase, putting $3000 on my credit card earned me miles and also enabled me to defer spending $3000 for another 30 days. I have never heard of a car dealer allowing anyone to put the whole car on a credit card. If you have, would love to hear your story. Also, the car dealer rater give you a car loan himself (via his loan provider) than have you benefit the credit card companies. The biggest motivation for the dealer to do this is of course that fact that the car dealer has to pay the credit card companies 2.5% of the amount just to provide you a convenience of enabling you to pay by your plastic. That is money right out of the car dealers pocket.  Bottom line is that its worth asking the dealer what he/she is ready to do. In today’s economic times many car dealers are ready to go the extra mile to close the sale. Good luck!