Are you looking to buy a new or used car? There are some awesome websites where you can research or buy a new vehicle. I will show you three websites I have used in the past to research buying a car. If you have bought a car online before, we want to hear from you in the comments below!
The first site we will be looking at has an awesome domain name and probably millions of dollars behind it - Cars.com. Their homepage looks like this:
You can use the drop-down menu at the top to build or find your perfect new or used car. And the section below it allows you to research specific makes and models. You can browse by type such as passenger cars, sports cars, SUVs, luxury, "green" vehicles and more. You can also search by year or model or make. This is a great first stop.
Below, you can see I searched for a new car from Land Rover:
They then allow you to either build your own from scratch where you can pick your options, colors and more. But I chose to see new inventory in local dealers. This is what I got:
You can sort by price to narrow your search and other options. They have an option to email the dealer or their 800 number.
The next site we will look at is called AutoWeb [No Longer Available]. They have the same features as Cars.com and they have Kelley blue book values for you if you are looking to sell or trade in your current vehicle. Their site's homepage looks like this:
Here I chose to get a new car quote on a Mercedes Benz:
They even have Rolls Royces listed here. I continued on and saw this:
I could see the lowest advertiseable MSRP but could not get specifics unless I want to speak to a representative. I passed because there is much more information to be had on the interwebs. So I moved on to a web site called AutoTraders and I chose a Bentley:
And that took me to a screen like this where you can either get very specific about what you want or be very broad and search through everything like this:
Filling that out, I then moved on to this screen when I was able to view the actual models, years and condition in the listings below. I can have a 2006 Bentley for under $100k - wonder what's wrong with it (or maybe its just the economy?)
All in all there are countless resources on the Internet for researching and buying cars in any situation. You can use websites like carfacts or this site that was shown in the Make Use Of directory called Real Car Tips.
Just make sure you use a reputable website and that you can find a real live person to talk to if you call their phone number. Also if a deal is too good to be true, chances are it is. If you are not so great with the web ask someone who is!
Leave your tips and experiences in the comments for everyone please.