Best Used Car Buying Tips

[puffkin]

I know this is about used cars, but are you sure you don't want to buy new? DH just changed jobs and that meant buying a new car as the old one was a company car. We went looking for a used car, but got a much nicer car new, cheaper (and new always means better interest rate). We ended up with a gas efficient, base PT Cruiser. The only options we added was a/c & auto transmission. I was amazed at what came standard. There were a ton of rebates, and we got it at invoice prior to that (dealer incentives going on right now).

Just a thought.

We found the same thing with buying a '06 Toyota Corolla. We only ended up paying about $1500 more than what 2 or 3 year old cars were going for with 20k miles. We did only look at new models with the side impact/ABS option, which was not available on the used models and added about $800 to the price of the new car. So really, when comparing apples to apples, we only spent about $700-$1000 more, got full warranty and better financing. They just didn't seem to want to negotiate on the used vehicles. I think it really depends on time of month, car popularity, dealer inventory and incentives.