Buying a new car stirs up mixed emotions in everyone. On one hand, it is an exciting time because you’re about to go on a thrilling hunt to find the car of your dreams. On the other hand, you are about to make a huge investment in a product that you will use daily for a number of years and this can cause some anxiety and skepticism.

Over the next few weeks CARCHEX will bring you Pat Goss’ Car Buying Tips. This video series will walk you through all the car buying steps and give helpful tips to make sure you walk away feeling confident with your car buying decision.

In this first video, Pat Goss takes a look at “Getting Started at the Dealership.”  His best advice is to be prepared by making a list of everything that you need and WANT in your new vehicle.

After you purchase your new vehicle, don’t forget to protect your car with an extended auto warranty from CARCHEX.  Stay tuned for more videos in this series!

How to Shop For a New Car: Getting Started at the Dealership

Well one of the things that you want to make sure of is that you have a list of things that are very, very important to you. Not just things that are practical but things that you want in your vehicle as well. You have to include a few of the wants and the niceties, not just the necessities now once you have that, it’s off to the dealership.

Once at the Dealership you have to pick out the car that you want to buy. Now, you have to road test this car and usually there is a sales person that comes with you and they’re going to over see what you do. Well, now here’s where you can get yourself in trouble.

The salesperson wants you to take the shortest trip possible; you want to take the longest trip possible. See you want to cover some different types of roads. You want to go fast, you want to go slow, you want to go around corners, you want to drive a little bit in traffic and if you commute and people are in the car with you or you carry heavy things with you, you want to bring people with you to go on that road test or recruit people from the show room.

So you are using the car in the same condition that you will be using it on a daily basis.

One thing to remember on the road test is there may be things that annoy you. Well before you make that decision to buy that car remember one thing; if there is a major annoyance and you tell yourself “Oh Ill get used to it,” typically you will not. Typically that annoyance will be a thorn in your side as long as you own the car. So make sure you don’t have too many annoyances.