Car buying / renting

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Last Updated: Sunday, 11 June 2023 03:38
Published: Saturday, 10 June 2023 22:32
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Auto Buying:

You can buy a car at any car dealership in USA. The biggest question is which car to buy and how to get the lowest price for it.

1. Which Car to buy:

Time and again, Japanese cars have proved to be very reliable in long run. I've Toyota and Honda, and both have run for 10 years without requiring any fix except changing Tires, batteries once in 1st 10 years and oil/filter change every year. Few popular cars are:

  • Mini Compact cars: These are the smallest cars. Chevy Spark falls in this category, and is usually the cheapest car.
  • Sub Compact cars: These are the smallest cars right after Mini Compact. Hyundai Accent is a very reliable car here. Even though it's Korean car, it is at par with Japanese cars.
  • Compact Cars: Compact cars and above are called Sedans and they can still seat 5 very comfortably. Hond Civic and Toyota Corolla are the best cars in this category.
  • Mid size cars: These cars are bigger than Compact cars. Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are best options here. People with kids usually opt for mid size cars over Compact cars as they have more legroom, bigger trunk, and are more comfortable with 5 people in the car.
  • Minivans: If you have a family of 4 or more, there's nothing more convenient than a minivan. It can seat 7 or 8 people. Most popular minivans are Honda Odyssey (seats 7 or 8 depending on the model) and Toyota Sienna (seats 7)

 

2. What to pay:

This is a harder problem, as what is a good price to pay. We need to buy car at a price, where if we try to sell the car te next day, we shouldn't incur a loss. That would be the ideal price to pay, but may not always be possible yo buy a car at that price. I look at used car price for a given model, and year, on various websites, and then that becomes the baseline for the price of that car. Any new car that you buy for that model and year should be close to that price include all tax, licensing fees, etc.

My go to site is www.truecar.com. You can use this to check price of used car, and then compare of new car on different websites as www.edmunds.com, www.kbb.com and www.truecar.com.

 

Auto Renting:

You always have the option of renting a car. Many times it's a necessity, i.e when you are flying to a different city, you would need to rent a car.  buy a car at any car dea