19 Tips for Buying a Car

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1) New cars depreciate heavily. Older cars have repair costs. The sweetspot for buying a car is 2-8 years old.

2) Check car insurance rates for the car you want to buy.

3) Research the value from sites like KBB, Edmunds and Truecar

4) Read reviews on the car; see common complaints.

5) Don't buy a car at night. During the day, you'll be able to see the car more clearly and inspect it.

6) Don't tell a dealer the maximum you're willing to spend, because they'll try every which way they can to make sure the price adds up to that amount.

7) Ask the dealer for Carfax

Calling a parts store and asking

9) The only legit fees are taxes and registration. Any other fees a dealer adds are arbitrary and them just trying to make money off of you.

10) Skip add-ons a dealer offers. They're profiting off of you.

11) Pre-inspect a used car with a mechanic. Especially if it's an older one. $100-120 could make you avoid thousands on repairs.

12) Google the VIN number of a car

13) Take your time at a dealership; don't let them rush you. And be prepared to walk away.

14) Things to check: radio, air conditioner, heat, horn, windows, wipers, turn signals, seatbelts.

15) The loans offered at the dealership have a markup. A bank may charge the dealership 10% interest while the dealership charges you 12%.

16) The longer the period of financing, the more interest you pay. Even if the monthly payment is lower, it'll still add up to more cost over time for that reason.

17) Try to negotiate the MSRP of a car down if you can.

18) If you're doing a trade-in at a dealership, mention that toward the end. If you mention it earlier on, they may try to give you less value on the trade-in in exchange for other negotiations.

19) Things to check under the hood: transmission fluid, engine oil, brake fluid, antifreeze

My experience is different.

There are so many really good 15 to 20 year old cars for sale which have years of life left in them at rock bottom prices. Many are for sale at prices lower than their scrap value here in the UK.
Many cars get scrapped for very minor faults. My experience is that I have lost thousands of pounds in going for young cars of 5 to 10 years old. I have never bought new. The youngest car was a year and a half old.
I have needed to buy parts foe older cars but this is far cheaper than buying a young car and finding some major fault.
I have bought a six year old vehicle and had the timing belt go 20,000 miles before it should have been changed and the vehicle ended up being scrapped as it was too difficult to get to the engine due to design so no one wanted to touch it. (Citroen C8).
I tend to buy cars around 14 years old or older, as not only have they hit rock bottom prices, but the older cars were designed to last. New cars today in the last 5 years have ben designed not to last. The same thing with new bicycles and new houses etc. Their designs are such that they will need a LOT of maintenence in the future.
For example with cars, the cars engines now are made half the size, but are seriously boosted up at both ends via a turbo and a supercharger. They say that they will do better MPG and are cleaner for the enviroment (Where do they get this idea from?) Now if one is driving on a flat level road with hardly any wind and one is taking it easy it will do good mpg and be less polluting, but life is not like that. In reality roads are rarely like that and most journeys are not leasurely, and in practice the MPG figures are relistically half that, and the polution is going to be more than the older larger engines that they replaced, as when one pulls through the air and fuel by boosting it at high revs ones pollution levels go sky high! The larger older non boosted engines will go higher when working hard, but they will be generally less poluting when working hard then a boosted engine will be.
Also they will not last as long, as the smaller engines being massively boosted up puts excessive strain and wear on the components. Older engines would last between 200,000 and 500,000 miles depending on engine size, build quality and if it is a petrol or a diesel. (Many diesels have cast iron blocks and heavier built components designed to take the higher pressures of diesel combustion so they do tend to last a lot longer).
I would not expect todays small boosted engines to last that long. Having high revving highly stressed engines need more maintenence. Formula 1 engines are the ultimate examples of this. Max power in the smallest size with the finest tollerences mean they have to rebuild the engines at almost every race, or every few races. Though this is an extreme example of this, bring it back to a trade between performance and long lasting and todays engine designs using tiny engines and boosting them is not a good idea as they will wear out years before the older engines will. (The older idea was to try to cram in the largest engine that would fit, but not to boost it up and let the power come from the size of the engine if that makes sense? This means the engine itself is not stressed so much so it will last longer, and also engines tend to give better MPG when they are just chugging along, so there is that ultimate engine size compared to the weight of the car with its engine, where it achieves the best fuel efficiency and lasts the longest. Go larger than this and one is getting better performance but less MPG, and go smaller and the engine has to work harder and do less MPG. There is that happy medium and it varies from engine to engine.
The issue is that where in a small car one used to have an engine of say 1000cc to 1600cc, now they are using 500cc to about 1200cc and boosting them up to match the performance of the 1000 to 1600cc engines. This means the smaller engines have to work much harder and to do this they are boosted up, so don't expect them to last. The older engines will last.
So pick an older car. Rust is the main issue to look for. Do not worry about dents and scratches. As long as one paints any scratches to prevent the rust setting in they will be fine.
Dents... Think of a can of food. Dents in it do not mean the contents are damaged. They will be fine! Cars are like this. As long as it drives straight and is safe to use, dents are neither here or there when it comes to cars.
People today are fussy. Ok. Cant blame them but to be honest, it is just looks. Nothing else. Looks! And what does it matter? It doesn't!

If buying a classic car there is one thing you should take with you...a magnet. It may sound a strange thing to take but there is little better tool for finding where rust has been badly repaired using bondo/filler to hide it. It will also find hidden dents.

If buying a new car, never ever go for a newly launched model that has just come out. Always aim for buying the last cars of a discontinued model if you can, as what happens is new designs have faults which will have been redesigned a few times to sort them out while in production so the most reliable fault free vehicles will nearly always be the last few in production of that particular make and model and engine size that one wants.

Secondly, if one buys a car price booklet with reviews and one lives in the UK, if one sees a note on reliability that says the car is about average for this type of car then avoid, as several years ago a car manufacturer sued one of these car buying handbooks for a lot of money and won their case, as the reviews used to say the cars known faults, and the manufacturers sued claiming that it was effecting their car sales. Since then, the books have reworded what they put on cars that have well known faults and they say things like they are average for their reliability, or that they are reliable enough etc. The really genuinely reliable cars will have good reviews. Do not look on websites because the car manufacturers will often employ people to place good reviews on their cars on these sites so one can't get an honest reliable oppinion.

if one is in amuuurica, the WORST place to buy a car is in western washington and northwest oregon, due to the abundance of high-income people in those areas as well as military bases and gov't installations and corporations. cars here are more expensive, on average, than anywhere else in america. if you live in the great green northwest, one should strongly consider travelling east of the cascades and do their shopping in eastern washington, prices on average are a good 20%+ less. also consider using the Consumer Reports car buying service, which has been proven to lower prices for its customers.

Personally I would buy a toyota thats been checked out by a mechanic and has 300,000 miles on it and is mechanically sound.I would talk to people in South Dakota or Montana to register your vehicles there if it is legal to do so in your state.And pay cash but dont tell the dealership that or you could get small loan and pay it off in the first payment to get the best of both worlds.Or at least buy a car when it is 5 years old so others can eat the depreciation.And save for your cars replacement for an upgrade if you want.I would lowball as much as possible and always be prepared to walk away and dont give the impression to the car salesmen that you found a great car before the sale.I would look at Carfax and the vin number and the plates.Be a great negotitater or get someone to help you do so.But check with a lawyer in your state about the Montana thing.Or you could register it in New Mexico if you happen to live close to there and if they let you.Look for as few number of owners as possible.