Hi there smart drivers. Rick with Smart Drive Test talking to you today about
how to buy a used vehicle. And when you think of going out and buying a vehicle
is this what you think of: [BUYING A CAR :: TRANSFORMERS] "Son, I'm a lot of things.
A liar's not one em'.
Especially not in front of my Mammy.
Yes! Getting swindled
at the sleazy car dealership. Well today we're going to talk to you about some tips
and techniques about getting the best car for your money. Stick around, we'll be
right back with that information.
[INTRO & UPBEAT MUSIC]
Hi there smart drivers. Welcome back. Rick with
Smart Drive Test talking to you today about buying a used vehicle - a secondhand
vehicle and how to get the best value for your money. And getting the car that
you want. Not settling for some car that you think is a good deal. So we're going to
give you some tips and techniques about how to do that and the first thing that
I want to say about buying a used vehicle or any vehicle: know that the
price is always negotiable. It's not the sticker price that's on the windshield.
Do not just pay that...actually barter and negotiate for a better price. So that's
we're going to talk about. Now if you're new to Smart Drive Test, Smart Drive Test
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consider subscribing. Hit that subscribe button just about there. [POINTING TO THE SUBSCRIBE BUTTON] As well, hit that
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for you. Now as I said, all prices are negotiable for cars. And you can
negotiate. And yes some of you are thinking, why don't I buy a new vehicle. I
know exactly what my car payment is going to be every month. I'm going to get a bumper to
bumper warranty that's going to be five years. And yes that is an option for some
of you if you can afford to purchase a new vehicle. But I'm going to say to you
that you're going to get a lot more vehicle for less money if you're willing to buy
a vehicle that's a couple of years old; maybe even four years old. Because
oftentimes when you buy a second-hand vehicle or a used vehicle, it's got good
tires on it. It's got - some times it'll come with a set of winter tires or it'll
come with a Thule (roof rack and cargo box) or other accessories for the vehicle. If you buy a brand new
vehicle, one of the most prominent things that you're going to pay money for off the
hop is, you're going to buy new tires twenty or thirty thousand
kilometres, fifteen or twenty thousand miles down the road because the tires
that they put on these new vehicles only last a short amount of time, and you're
going to have to put new tires. So you're going have to make an investment of
about a thousand dollars on a brand new car within a year of owning that vehicle,
which is very frustrating for a lot of people. So if you buy a vehicle that's a
couple-of-years old, four-years-old, you might even get some warranty left over
on the vehicle. As well, you're going to spend probably half of what you would
for a new car. So think about that in terms of purchasing a second-hand
vehicle. You're going to get a lot more vehicle for a lot less money. Now the first
time I bought a vehicle, a long time ago, a couple of decades ago, it was a 1971 half-ton GMC,
with three-in-the-tree (column shift) manual transmission, and an inline-six motor
under the hood. It had a top speed of 85 miles an hour, about 145 kilometers an
hour. And it was what we call in this day and age, a beater. And for some of you who
are young you just got your license this is unfortunately what you're gonna be
looking for. You're going to be looking for a beater that's gonna be a few hundred
dollars. And you know, try and get the best vehicle that you can. There are still
beaters out there, and you still can buy vehicles for less than a thousand
dollars. But it's not going to last you more than a couple of years. And it's not
going to be very much fun to drive. So know that in terms of your first vehicle.
And my second vehicle wasn't much better than that: it was a 1975 Honda Civic as
you can see here in the image. And it had a four-speed manual transmission in it and it only lasted
about a year before the timing belt went in it. And I sold it to a wrecker for
$50, which was kind of frustrating because I put a new
windshield in it and the windshield was $50, and they only gave me $50 for the
whole car when I got them to pull it off the side of the road. So these are some
of the experiences you're going to have when you're buying a car. now if you have
help from your parents or family or friends. That's going to be a lot easier for
you. Now the first thing you need to figure out is how much money do I have.
Okay how much money do I have? What kind of a car can I afford? So you're going to
need to do a little bit of research and go on the internet and figure out what cars
are available for the price range in which you're in. If you're in the less
than a thousand dollars, it's going to be probably a twenty-year-old vehicle. And
try and find something that's going to be reliable. And the internet
will give you that information. If you just type in the vehicle that you're
looking for. The place to get started is either eBay or the Auto Trader here in
North America. Those are going to be your two places to get started in terms of
finding out what vehicles are available, how much these are worth. As well, you can
do some research on the internet and find out the reliability of the cars. People
will give you reports of whether the car is reliable, it lasts a long time, certain
things go wrong after a while and those types of things. So Carfax, Blue Book
value, and Auto Trader, and eBay. Those are the places that you're going to need to go
to start doing your research on your vehicle to figure out what kind of
vehicle you can get and how much money you're going to spend on that vehicle. So
for some of you, buying a vehicle is not going to be your first vehicle. you're going to have
to buy a replacement vehicle. And some years ago, I had a friend of mine who
crashed her vehicle and the insurance company wrote it off. So we had to find
her a new vehicle. And interestingly enough, we had lent her our second vehicle to
drive around so that she had some transportation. And she came back some
time later--and she wasn't very good at buying vehicles and those types of
things--and she said she'd found a vehicle. So we went down to look at it. It was at
the Honda dealership there in Kelowna, BC, Canada. And it was a Toyota Corolla. It was beige-
on-beige. It had a beige interior and beige outside [LAUGHING]. And in my mind, they were asking
way too much for it. I think they wanted thirteen thousand five hundred dollars
for it, and I thought it was only worth about nine thousand dollars. First of all,
I knew that this was not the car that she wanted. She was embarrassed that she
got into a crash, she was embarrassed that she was driving our vehicle, and
wanted to give it back to us as soon as possible. So I said to her, I said listen
this is not the vehicle you want. We're going to offer them a low price. And so when
you go into a dealership, what they do is you go in with the salesperson
into his or her office. You make an offer. And then they get up and they go and
talk to the manager. And they come back to say yes or no. And so this all went down, the
salesperson is behind the desk and we said $9,000. The salesperson said, I'll have to
go and talk to my manager. So he left the room, and I said to my wife and my second
mom who was buying the car. And I said to her, he's not going to take it, so we're just
going to leave. So he came back. And of course he didn't take the deal. And we
just left. And I just said okay fine. So I asked her after:
what kind of car do you want? She said, well I want a blue car. That was it!
She just wanted a blue car. So I looked around on the internet for a reliable
car and I found a Honda Civic that wasn't too far away. It was in her price
range, and it was blue and it was an automatic transmission. It was a good car. So I went
down and it was at the dealership in Penticton, BC, Canada. I drove down there and had a
look at it. I went through the whole vehicle, did a pre-trip inspection. And
this is one of the other things you want to do, is do a pre-trip inspection on the
vehicle. And I'll put a card up in the corner here for you on the pre-trip
inspection and how to do that and make sure that everything's working, and make sure
it's been detailed properly. What had happened with the Honda Civic, the blue
Honda Civic that I had found, was that it had been owned by a single mom. She had a
couple of kids, and when they detailed the car at the dealership they hadn't
cleaned in behind the rear seats. So I was able to negotiate with the dealership
for a couple hundred dollars off the price because it hadn't been detailed.
Now a couple other points about going to dealerships. Know that there's going to
be additional costs in addition to the vehicle's price itself. They're going to
charge you for processing paperwork and those types of things. And in my
experience, that's about five hundred dollars at dealerships. So there are all
kind of bonus things that dealerships charge for. And you know, I try not to adhere to conspiracy, but it tends
to be a bit of conspiracy that they have all these administrative costs. So know
that those can be negotiated in terms of the price that you're going to pay for
the vehicle. At dealerships, you're going to deal with sales people, you're
going to deal with managers, you're going to deal with finance departments, and those
types of things. And one other point - some years ago I had a friend of mine--a
really close family friend. His wife had passed away, and as part of her passing
away, there was insurance money that came. And she was going to donate a portion of
this money to the summer camp that her kids went to. So he had asked the summer camp what they
needed. And they needed a truck. So he called me. I was in Kelowna at the time.
And he was looking at a truck there. And he asked me to go down and test drive the vehicle.
And I went down and test drove it. And it was an old Chevy with a flat deck on it. And
I said, no this really isn't what they need. So I started looking around
Kelowna for vehicles. And I found these pickup trucks that were just straight
cab pickup trucks, which is something that's really difficult to find. Today most
of them are going to be crew cabs and
there going to have another set of doors and seats
behind the driver's seat. And it was spring and and in the
picture it was wintertime. So I called and I said, do you still have these
vehicles. Well it turned out that they were Ford trucks at the Chrysler
dealership. And what had happened was that somehow the Chrysler dealership was
responsible for leasing to Telus, which is one of the big phone companies
here in Canada. And they said, yeah we still have a bunch of them. So I went
down and looked at them. And the salesperson was really good. He went out
and he picked the best one out for me. And you know, up until this juncture I
hadn't dealt a whole lot with domestic vehicles--you know Dodge, Ford and
Chevrolet--General Motors rather. I'd been dealing mostly with imports - Honda
and Toyota. And I went in, we took the truck for a drive. We decided
that yes, we're going to buy it. And we started negotiating the price. And I sort
of went $5,000 below price. They were asking twenty thousand. I said fifteen thousand. And
they were like yeah. They didn't even balk at the price. And when that happens, and you're
negotiating prices, you're thinking, "oh I should have started at ten thousand
instead of five thousand lower." So know that in terms of negotiation. And of
course, there was the the paperwork fee and those types of things. And they
agreed, and by the time we got done, I think it was about fourteen thousand, five hundred,
everything in for the vehicle. And it was a fairly decent vehicle that we got for
the summer camp. It was a leased vehicle and it was fairly good. So make sure that you do a
pre-trip inspection, you take the vehicle for a drive,. and drive it fairly
aggressively if you buy it from a dealership and those types of things. And
as well, when you do buy it from a dealership, know that once you pay the
price, it's very difficult to get anything else out of them once you have
finalized and actually paid them the money. now the final story that I'll tell
you is the buggy (1998 Honda CRV). I bought the buggy about four years ago.
And I bought it privately. And the person that I purchased it from - the seller that
I purchased it from wanted $4,500 originally. And it wasn't worth $4,500. I had
done my research on the internet. I'd driven the vehicle before because I had
another Honda CRV of a similar vintage previously. And I felt he wanted too
much money. So I only wanted to pay him about $3,500, but he had a set of winter
tires and what not with it. And I took it for a
drive. It was a good vehicle. it has been good vehicle for the last four years.
It's got three hundred and twenty five thousand kilometers - two hundred thousand
miles on it now. So it's been a good vehicle. But unfortunately, what had
happened was that he had smoked in it. And it still smelled of smoke, even though he
had tried to detail it. And you can get smoke smell out of cars if sellers have
smoked in the car. Use a lot of vinegar and get one of those aerosol bombs from
your local auto parts shop and let one of those off in there. And that'll get
rid of the smoke smell for you. So you need to do a bit of work. So if somebody
smoked in the vehicle, you can get a really good price on the vehicle because
they're going to have a hard time selling it. As well, my vehicle is a manual
transmission for those of you who have watched other videos. It was a
really good negotiating point (smoking). And after talking to him for a while and just
saying to him, no I don't want to pay this much for it. And we went over and
looked at the winter tires, and those types of things. And I said listen, I'm
going to have to put new tires on it because the tires--the all-season tires
on it--weren't very good. So finally in the end after negotiating, after
bartering and telling him that I was only going to pay thirty five hundred
dollars. And I paid him $3,500 cash. He accepted thirty
five hundred dollars cash because that's what I had in my pocket at the time. And that's
what I was willing to pay for the vehicle. So last point on terms of cash.
If you're going to a private seller, cash is going to work for you and it's going
to give you some leverage in terms of getting a better price on the vehicle. If
you go to a dealership, cash is not going to work for you. Don't let on to the
dealership that you're going to pay cash for the vehicle. Let on that you're going to
take financing, because dealerships get a kickback, they make money from the
financing. So know that. So don't let on that you're going to pay
cash for it. Let on that you're going to finance the vehicle if you go to a
dealership. And also, dealerships are going to have warranties and those types of
things that you could also consider in terms of purchasing a vehicle. So those
are a few ideas and tips and techniques that you can use in terms of
purchasing a vehicle. Do your research, figure out what kind of
vehicle you want. If you want a blue car, then buy a blue car, if you want an
orange car, buy an orange car. Because there are tons and tons of vehicles on
the market, And if you do a little bit of work you're going to be able to get the
vehicle that you want. And know this is going to be your second largest
purchase next to buying a house. So spend a bit of time and get the vehicle that
you want. And know that you're going to get more vehicle for probably half the
cost of what you would pay for a new one. So in this day-and-age, considering a
secondhand vehicle is really an option that you can consider in terms of
getting a vehicle that you really want and want to drive every day. And you know,
spend a considerable amount of time in. Question for my smart drivers: do you
have any tips or techniques for new drivers--smart drivers--who are looking to
purchase a vehicle and get the best value for their money. Leave a comment
down in the comment section there. All of that helps us out. I'm Rick with Smart
Drive Test. Thanks very much for watching. Good luck on your road test. And remember,
pick the best answer not necessarily the right answer. Have a great day.
Bye now.