for new car buyers （转帖）

Nowadays, the ever-increasing gas price drives people to buy gas-saving compact cars. It is understandable. However, seems like the ultimate goal of buying a car is largely neglected. Why do we buy a car? Just for saving gas? This basic question may have not been addressed enough for most of the car buyers. For my understanding, car is the very tool you have to own. It is a tool you used everyday for commuting. It is also a big horse you use to carry your family from place to place.

Ideally, the car you are expecting for should be good in every aspect of 1) safety 2) reliability and 3) cost to own. Several nice websites are available there to provide professional assessment on all these regards (www.edmunds.com, www.carsdirect.com, … ).

People may challenge me for placing the safety in the very first. Couple of reasons for this pick. Although you’re a good and cautious driver, sometime the accident is still unavoidable. Except for your fault, the accident may be caused by either bad weather conditions or mistakes from another part. It’s well known that car accident, once it happens, usually leads to heavy lost, including high repairing cost, extra money for possible replacement, possible leap of insurance, as well as the most expensive part, the cost for your damaged physical body, to which none of us could afford and nobody want to face. You could get some compensation from the insurance company or you may earn more money later to fill in the money gap. But can you reimburse anything form the accident caused severe physical damage (not mention the lost of a life)? As a fact, most people discussing car-buying here are the bread-earners in family, and very often your adored family members are travel within the same car. Thus how can you ignore the safety issue when seeking your next horse? How can you pick a low-priced car with poor safety score just for saving few hundreds bucks over years on gas? Keep in mind the cost for gas maybe the minor part among the cost to own, which include devaluation, parts and maintenance, and gas consumption, as well as insurance. So please treat you and your family well by buying a car with high safety ranking score.

Car-buying is one of the most important investments in our life. To some extent it is as important as other investment likebuying a house. We just realized this point recently when buying a car for my wife. Initially my wife just wanted to pick a small car with low price and high mpg. She preferred to put more money for investment rather than buying my target car that has all superb features and rep for safety except for its cost. Her point is quite straightforward: money spent for the stock or house may get good return over years; in contrast the investment to that car is doing nothing but lose of money exemplified by devaluation over years. I argued but was immediately accused by spending day and night for weeks to study car buying. I was also warned by remarks like “we are not that rich to buy car for enjoying”.

However, a recent report on a car accident occurred in NY woke her a little bit. (See http://www..com/vhnews.aspx?topic_id=1000&msg_id=31546&page=2, http://www..com/vhnews.aspx?topic_id=1000&msg_id=31594&page=1). After reading this report, my wife began taking car-buying as a serious issue. I managed to let her know that buying a perfect car is also a smart investment, not on money but on life, which is much more important. We also came to realize that after you buy a car, even at the very moment when the purchase documents is signed, you simply lose the chance to change it if you find the car unsatisfied, as the followed trade in will guarantee you couple of thousands dollars in lose. However once you buy a good car like the one I am fond of, it provides you with much safer ride for at least ten years! Maybe you may spend five thousands more than the compact car, but it is just only 40 bucks per month over 10 years, a cost less than a cloth or two family dinner out. Finally, this calculation enables us making our final decision as I expected.

In conclusion, I am not trying to urge people buying expensive cars, but cars with high safety rank. Of cause this simply means you need spend more money. But if you do your home work well, you may save several thousands dollars by beating those sneaky, crafty and sly dealers. We greatly benefited from the “car-buying experience and price paid” section of the forum in www.edmunds.com, which provides the best deal you may have currently (actually we bought our car with a price around $9000 below the MSRP).

Hope this personal point of view is of little help for folks in the market for a new car, particularly those comrades that are about to triggering at a nice car but facing the objection from your wives. Sorry for my poor English if it bothers. I wish I have a Chinese platform.