So Many Choices – What’s a Car Buyer to Do!

Happy Halloween! On this haunted day, I thought I would share my most recent experience helping my good friend Bill purchase a new car – no ghosts involved. He tends to buy a new car every 2-3 years and the process of how he arrived at his decision was very interesting to me.

Like many people out there looking for a new car, Bill found the choices to be overwhelming. Buying a car in today’s market is not only a ”pricing” decision, it’s also a “lifestyle” decision. Let me explain a little further. Once Bill, or any buyer, decides how much they can afford on a lease/finance/cash purchase, they need to decide what their needs are from a lifestyle point of view. While many adults would like to drive a sports car, as a practical adult or parent you may need to consider aesthetics vs. functionality.

Back to Bill – his wife has an SUV so they don’t necessarily need another big car, but at the same time he regularly has to haul his kids around to school during the week and to various activities on the weekend so he needed to have the ability to carry passengers when need be. He had decided that a four-seater was a must, but there are several sporty four-seater coupes out there that can handle the occasional passenger trip. We took a look at a few of these but Bill decided that the additional benefit of four doors outweighed the benefit of a sleek looking coupe. So it was decided that he was going to buy a four door car. Now we needed to figure out which manufacturer he would go with.

Many people find it an overwhelming time to buy a car in this segment because there are so many brands with tried and true as well as new models. Lexus, Cadillac and Infiniti have recently refreshed their models, whereas BMW and Mercedes are several years into their product cycle. This was Bill’s next biggest decision. I know a number of people who prefer to go with an older design that has likely already been tweaked to perfection as opposed to a new design that may or may not have issues in the first year or two of production – these are tough choices to make!

The decisions don’t end there, you have variations in technology, size, warranty, safety… I could go on forever. At the end of the day, once Bill had identified his price and lifestyle needs, the determining factor was how the car drove. After all, everything else becomes irrelevant if you don’t feel good in the car or it doesn't drive as you would expect. As a result, we narrowed it down to 5 cars to test drive, and at the end of the day Bill chose the one that he was most comfortable in, now that we’d already covered the initial constraints of price and lifestyle.

The lesson learned here is when making a significantly large purchase such as an automobile, you really need go through a thorough process that identifies both your needs and wants so you don’t end up with a car that you are unhappy with – which can mean significant penalties to either get out of the lease or sell the car. How did your last car buying experience go?

- Dave