Edmunds.com Strategies for Smart Car Buyers (Edmunds.com Car Buying Guide Strategies for Smart Shoppers)

Customer Review: A must buy book for new car buyers
I never bought a car in my entire life, and I often heard that car buying is really hard. So I’d thought that educating myself before buying a car, is the first step.
I find this book very detailed and straight forward, because it widens your vision all about cars. It teaches you, first about budgeting and financing, it gives you the pros and cons about buying new car or used car and also about leasing a car. It will also educate you about types of car like (sedan,coup,van.etc)

Car Buying Online for Dummies CD-ROM includes Buy or Lease It 2.0 shareware

Includes a bonus 24-page directory to rev up your search!

Save time and money with these road-tested tips So, you want to kick some tires without being tailgated around the dealership by a salesman? This fun and speedy guide gives you license to compare prices, financing options, safety ratings, warranties, and more — at your convenience on the Internet. Follow these directions and turn your car-buying experience into a joyride! all this on the bonus CD-ROM Auto Care Center 3.0 trial version Buy or Lease It 2.0 shareware Car Book Plus 5.0, evaluation version Car Organizer Deluxe 1.3 shareware PC running Windows 95 or later or a 68040 Mac running OS 7.55 or later. See the CD Appendix for details and complete system requirements.
Customer Review: This Book Will Save You Money… Lot’s of Money!
This is probably one of the most useful books I have ever bought.

Bourque guided me step-by-step through the process of buying a car online.

My experience was excellent. I got the vehicle I wanted at a price no other “offline” dealer was prepared to touch. I even managed to get them to throw in hundreds of dollars in extras.

I wish everything was this easy. Good job Pierre.

Buying a Car for Dummies Buying a car is never easy. Besides spending a sizeable amount of money on this investment, your liveliness probably relies on this vehicle. You need to know that your car will get you from point A to point B in a timely and safe manner—so buying a lemon is not something you can afford to do.

Buying A Car For Dummies is for you if you need to find out how to buy, sell, insure, drive, protect, or rent a vehicle. It doesn’t matter how old you are (as long as you can legally drive and have a license), this book can make your experience with cars a smooth ride.

Buying A Car For Dummies can help you save a truckload of money over the life of your vehicle as you find out all you need to know about new and used car ownership in this entertaining and informative reference guide. This dependable book covers all avenues of buying and owning a car, from negotiating a fair price to finding reliable insurance to saving money on routine servicing. You’ll stay in the driver& #8217;s seat as you discover how to:

• Calculate how much you current car really costs you
• Weigh the pros and cons of buying new or used
• Get the best trade-in, resale, or donation value for your vehicle
• Pick out a cherry and avoid lemons—expert advice for buying a reliable used car

Don’t Get Taken Every Time : The Ultimate Guide to Buying or Leasing a Car in the Showroom or on the Internet For fifteen years, automotive consumer expert and former auto dealer Remar Sutton has helped hundreds of thousands of car buyers to get the best deal in town. This completely new edition protects car buyers from the dealers’ latest secret weapon-the Internet. Even the smallest bit of information entered on a Web site can give dealers what they need to take unfair advantage of their customers. From shopping and negotiating to financing, Sutton exposes car dealers’ scams and gives you step-by-step instructions on how to get the best deal. With vital information about Internet shopping, privacy issues and how to use the Internet safely, and taking on the dealers, Sutton’s guide is a must-read before stepping into a real or virtual showroom.
Customer Review: Good info, but the online stuff is overblown …
This book provides some good information on buying cars, and many of the tips suggested are spot on. But when it comes to the role of computers and the Internet in this equation, the author really needs to do more research for the next edition of this book. I work for one of the bigger online car-buying sites as well as providing support for car dealerships in getting their inventory online, and I thought it important to clear the air about a few things.
First of all, the way the author presents things, you would think that if you were to visit autotrader.com (or a similar site) with cookies turned on, suddenly every dealer in town knows your life history. But I’m here to tell you that these sites aren’t nearly that sophisticated, and neither are the dealers. In fact, some dealers still keep their car inventory on Excel spreadsheets! And for the ones that do have some sort of server for managing inventory and sales, many of them don’t even know how to use them beyond the basic essentials. In fact, I myself know more about these systems than do most dealers, and I’ve never personally worked with any of them. Trust me when I say that, contrary to what this book will tell you, dealers (or at least none of the ones I’ve seen) don’t have some elaberate network of supercomputers to track your every move online. Heck, most of them could barely manage a Google search on their own
In fact, as far as the web is concerned, dealers won’t pay attention to you unless you actually go online and fill out a form requesting a price quote or further information about a car, and then they only have as much data as you give them. Once you fill out the form, your request for information goes into a ‘lead management tool’ (one of these I also provide support for), which is little more than an Outlook-style web interface where dealers can track their dealings with you. For example, they can log any email, phone, or personal meetings, etc that they have with you, along with reminders of appointments to test drive a car and other important events. But my question to you is, since you have obviously expressed an interest in one or more of their vehicles, why WOULDN’T they want to keep a log of their correspondance with you? It’s not like they’re going to sell the information. In fact, as soon as the correspondance ends (either in you buying a car or doing business somewhere else), they’ll either mark you as ‘sold’ or ‘dead’ respectively and that’s pretty much the end of it, untl/unless you write them again. In fact, the worst that can happen is you may get occassional spam from the dealer (something I’m not particularly happy that dealers do) about sales events and such, and you can even opt out of those.