How To Buy A Used Car: Step 2, The Hunt

"DailyTurismo" (thedailyturismo) 07/10/2015 at 14:15 • Filed to: Daily Turismo, How To Buy A Used Car, Blog

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A few years ago, if you were looking for a used car, your options were limited to a few print magazines and the local newspaper. With the explosion of the internet, everything changed, but navigating this minefield can be tricky. This is Step 2 in Daily Turismo’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! series — The Hunt, Searching for Your Next Ride.

With Elon Musk’s announcement last year that Telsa Motors will allow its !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! it seemed like a good time to lift up Daily Turismo’s skirt and expose a little of our intellectual property. Unfortunately DT’s trade secrets are about as valuable as a bunch of pie-in-the-sky patents for technology that neither manufacturer nor consumer wants to touch — but that won’t stop us from trying to protect it with lawyers share it with the world.

I fondly remember browsing copies of Autotrader print magazine in the local 7-11, but those days are long gone. Finding a good used car in the world wide web is easier, but also filled with far too much nonsense. Scammers, con artists, and axe murderers lurk around every turn, but if you are cautious and diligent, you can find all sorts of marvelous cars for a fair price. Time to examine the various sites you can find used cars, starting with the big ones.

Ebay Motors

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! isn’t just a site with thousands of cars for sale, it also features one of the best interfaces for finding what you want and quickly. Just type in the name of the car you are looking to buy and presto — the results are filled with items matching and related to your search. Should you feel adventurous, you can also search by specific make/model/trim/transmission type/fuel/engine — but be aware that sellers don’t always input that information correctly and you might miss out on good deals. You can also browse by category, but there is a catch! If you really want to find the good stuff, you’ve got to use the drop down menu on the left side of the ebay motors homepage and select Powersports & More, and then click on Other Vehicles. You are now taken to the mysterious land of vehicles that don’t necessarily show up in the normal ebay motors Cars & Trucks search spots. Yes. Mysterious indeed. In the Other Vehicles category you can further refine your hunting by selecting from such choices as aircraft (groovy), buses (mmmkay), military vehicles (better...), race cars -not street legal (now we are getting somewhere) and finally other (oooo...the holy grail....). That is right, there is an others subcategory in the other vehicles group under powersports and more . In here you will find all manner of things like the World’s Largest Food Truck, a giant pig trailer, a home built desert fox dune buggy, 2/3s scale Corvette replica...its basically a swap meet for ebay rejects! Yes!

Craigslist

If eBay is a three bedroom single family residence, then craigslist is the mobile home located on the edge of town. It isn’t that the cars on craigslist aren’t as nice as those on eBay, it is just the free and anonymous listing service offers a low barrier of entry to hackers, 419ers, derelicts, and bargain car buyer/seller alike. Craigslist offers a fantastic native search function that was only recently augmented with the ability filter your search by year, make/model, transmission type, odometer reading, all kinds of stuff. Unfortunately, the ability to search across nationwide craigslist is still something you need to head to google, onecraigs, or autotempest for...more on that later. The key to buying cars on craigslist is to the use the simple rule — if it is expensive, ignore it because the seller won’t take an offer, and if it is cheap, it’s probably a scam. Clear? If you want my honest opinion — this is the place to get deals on cars. The ride will be wild, but the potential might outweigh the risks. What is the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that can happen?

Aggregators

These aren’t sites that involve reptilian powers, but they do offer a great way to surf multiple listing services without filling your browser with new tabs. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is one of my favorite for its clean interface and comprehensive packaging (autotrader, craigslist, ebay, carsdirect, cars.com — all in one place), but there are tons of other similar sites, like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and many others. These are great for finding some oddball classic or rare model, but a bit overwhelming if you are searching for a popular vehicle, so I tend to stick to the native site unless looking for something really specific in a wide area. Know of another aggregator that does a great job? Put it in the comments below.

Forums

Make/model specific forums are fantastic places to research information about a particular car and typically offer a classified section. Although you can get your fix at any number of oddball model specific sites, I prefer highly active user forums like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Some classifieds are limited to specific vehicles with all kinds of rules, while others are a free for all where you can post your !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! without fear of being flamed. One of the cooler things about many forums is that you can post up a “wanted” ad and get tons of feedback from dedicated enthusiast (aka nuts) about that particular make/model and perhaps a few good leads. Just be aware that forums are going to be filled with people who love their specific make model a little too much, and conversations that go like this:

Dude A: Here is my awesome limited edition hoopty mobile for sale.

Dude B: That car is sweet, I’ve already got three, but this is a great deal.

Dude A: Still for sale.

Dude B: How has this car not sold yet? So sweet. Just picked up another at a pick-a-part yesterday.

Dude A: If this car doesn’t sell today, I’m gonna paint it a confederate flag on the top and keep it for ever.

Dude A: Bump to top, still for sale.

Dude A: Price lowered, still for sale.

Autotrader

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is what is left of the king of car listings from a few decades ago, and what it lacks in quantity compared to craigslist, it makes up in the fact that paying sellers aren’t going to be scammers...well...at least they are less likely to be scammers. One of the funny things about AT that I’ve noticed is that the demographic of users is strongly skewed towards older men, particularly the guys 40-60 years old who remember the print magazine in their prime. These guys don’t have a problem paying $50 to list a car and probably think craigslist is mostly used for drugs, casual hookups, and murder-for-hire (and they are likely correct). Expect AT to be a great place to buy a Camaro or C4 Corvette for many years to come, but don’t expect to find a psychopathic drug dealer looking for a quickie.

Hemmings

For a place that has the reputation of being a hoity-toity site for the Pebble Beach crowd, you can find quite a few good deals on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! any day of the week. Mostly on marques that the leather glove and fancy watch crowd won’t touch, like a vintage Saab or Simca. Hemmings has a very interesting parts section that is filled with all kinds of engines that aren’t as good, reliable, powerful, or cheap as an LS1, but would make for an interesting swap.

Blog Spotters

These are sites that are dedicated to providing a daily (hourly...or weekly) listing of the more interesting cars around the interweb. Naturally, you’ll want to visit the best — !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (that’s us, in case you accidentally clicked on this story thinking you were at the Wall Street Journal’s section on farming tips), but plenty of other sites provide curated listings, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ...the list goes on. What do they all have in common? A passion for all things automotive, and you can’t beat that with a robotic search engine. Obviously each site has its own slant on things, but expect competition for the good deals to be fierce and you’ll need to act fast to beat other buyers.

You

Say what? This is one of my personal favorite ways to find cars for sale — look for them. See a for sale sign in a car as you are driving to work — flip that illegal U-turn (in California it is customary to extend a middle finger to anyone nearby as a thanks for giving you the right of way) and check it out. Walking around at a car show? Half the cars are for sale, and probably overpriced, but who knows, you just might get lucky. Keep your eyes open. Talk to you friends/neighbors, let them know you are a car guy, and chances are good you’ll find cars falling in your lap. They might need some work or have a few cobwebs in the wheel wells, but some of my favorite cars were found via word of mouth.

A few more thoughts...

The real trick when you are searching for your next ride is that you shouldn’t be simply trying to find “the one”, but you should also be cataloging and surveying the market. Do you see lots of cars languishing for months on craigslist or not meeting reserve on fleabay? That means the market is soft and you might find similar issues if you try and dump your ride in a year or two. You should keep a spreadsheet or a folder on your personal computer (for the mobile loving kids out there, these are the big things that old people use to surf the web...) with a catalog of the cars you’ve found, and don’t be afraid to peruse eBay’s completed listings; this gives you a great idea of what the market looks like and who uses shill bidders for their auctions. What did I miss? Put it in the comments below. Stay tuned for Step 3 of Daily Turismo’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! : First Contact: How to screen potential cars via web/phone/email.

Originally published as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on Daily Turismo.

DrScientist > DailyTurismo 07/10/2015 at 14:56

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“A few years ago, if you were looking for a used car, your options were limited to a few print magazines and the local newspaper.”

A few years ago?!?! more like 15-20 years ago. come on. cars.com and autotrader and ebay have been around more than a decade.

“A few print magazines?”

A few? there were at least double digits of glossy prints with “for sale” sections in the back, not including those ad magazines at the grocery store, and if you were of a certain tax bracket there was always the dupont registry.

And, um, what about used car dealerships? or even new car dealerships with used cars on their lots?

Manwich - now Keto-Friendly > DailyTurismo 07/11/2015 at 11:30

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I use craigslist, autotrader.ca, carpages.ca and kijiji.ca. I avoid ebay because of past experiences with idiot/fake bidders. And cars.com is useless to me as it’s US-focused.

If I was looking for a collectible car, I would use Hemmings or hit some forum for the make/model I’m interested in.

mike20000000 > DailyTurismo 08/06/2016 at 17:04

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You guys should check out CarSumo . It’s an aggregator that gets listings from a few different sites.