What makes an owner trade in their car?

This may not be a question for the ages. But the impact this question has on every automaker will very well determine their long-term successes and failures.

After all, manufacturers want you to become an evangelist for their chosen brand. Billions of advertising dollars can be hurled at the general public in an endless cacophony of overt and nuance ridden ways. But in the end, it’s the good graces and big mouths of us current owners that carries the most sway. No clever hamster, truck loving dog, or clueless celebrity can approach the collective influence of the word of mouth.

Your opinion matters most, bar none… and now with the potential of over 300,000 surveys and data sets to tabulate, I may need a bit of help with it all.

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Morning phone rings at the car lot…

Me: Hello?

Random Stranger: Hi there, like, I have this friend you know and he told me that you finance vehicles, and his name is Emmanuel and aahhh, like I was wondering, well, uh, do you have any Toyotas and like, do you, ummm… finance vehicles you know?

Me: I’m sorry. Who is this?

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During the next several weeks you are going to be exposed to a lot of pointless hysteria about used cars prices in the Northeast.

Journalists will point out the extremes and the outliers to a media audience that is always easily attracted to the extremes and outliers of our society.

But it won’t be the truth. The real bump in traffic related to Hurricane Sandy won’t be with used cars at all.

It will be with new cars.

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As collateral damage of Super-Sandy, stories are making the rounds of water-logged cars dumped on unsuspecting buyers by criminal dealers. Like many fake pictures posted on Twitter and Facebook, these stories are mostly made up, or pushed by new car interests. The dangers lurk elsewhere: In your neighbor’s driveway, on eBay, in the classifieds. Read this story if you don’t want to become a belated victim of Sandy. (Read More…)

Ferraris are expensive, Porsches (usually) less so. This is something that every kid on the street knows, right? Turns out that it is, as the song says, truer than true.

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Does retail always give you the best return when it comes to cars?

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When it comes to buying a used car there are two basic negotiating mindsets. You can either be fair and decent or unfair and obnoxious. If you seek to chisel and deceive then chances are you will get a bad car. Only the desperate and deceitful are willing to put up with that type of BS.

Want a ‘great’ car? Then realize that many sellers respond extremely well to honesty and decency. Win – win is no sin. So, karma lovers, here’s some tips for negotiating the purchase of a used car by observing the Golden Rule.

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[Ed: Part one of Steve Lang’s updated used car buying guide is here, part two is here.]

You can rigorously apply the tests described by previous installments of this series without encountering a single setback. However when it comes to buying a used car, it pays to assume one simple salient fact: you don’t know the complete truth.

At least not yet.

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Used cars give automobile buyers the best possible bang for the buck– except when they don’t. As a professional dealer, I could tell you stories of used car calamities that would make public transportation seem like the only sensible option. Tales of stitched together death traps that looked as new as the day both cars were born. Cars with supposedly clean registration papers that turned out to be hotter than Peachtree Street in mid-August. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to buy a used car without getting your proverbial clock cleaned.

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The Lord Needs No Restraint

Gentlemen, there’s some automotive/emotional baggage that I need a resolution for.

I’m finally in a position to replace a Celica with something that will possibly see an HPDE, and the occasional autocross. I have $9000 to spend. Although the Celi drove beautifully, it wasn’t a viscerally thrilling car and I’d like to learn the dynamics of a rwd platform.

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“Reliability, safety and availability” were the criteria Edmunds used to arrive at its 2012 used car best bets. They are taken from the pool of 2005 through 2010 cars, because two to seven year old cars usually are the better deals.

And the winners are: (Read More…)

Did we tell you a month ago to sell your used car now if you want to get the most mullah out of your clunker? We (or rather NADA) called the peak correctly. Used car prices are heading south. (Read More…)

If the Ferrari FF is just a little too common for you, a Minnesota man has what must be the only one of its kind in the United States – a 1987 Honda Accord Aerodeck, practically new with just 29,750 miles on the clock.

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Used car prices have been rising for a while to a degree that sometimes it can be cheaper to buy new than used. If you have been sitting on the fence, it could be time to hop on down. Used car prices are predicted to peak within the next two months. (Read More…)