Revving Up to Buy a Car? Various Web Sites Can Steer You in the Right Direction

Shopping for a car has never been my idea of a good time. The process of haggling with a car salesman can be disquieting, especially because he knows the actual break-even price for a car, while buyers typically are in the dark.

But thanks to the Internet, you can buy a new car online and avoid much of the negotiating process.

I considered that option when I bought a car last month, but in the end I wound up buying a slightly used car from a dealer. Still, the information I got from Web sites made the process of selecting and negotiating for a car a lot easier.

Before I started test-driving cars, I visited Cars.com and Edmunds.com to narrow my list of candidates. Cars.com allows you to enter the features and price range you want to get a list of matching cars. I wanted a car with five or six seats, front and side air bags, a CD changer and a moon roof. Leather was optional.

For each car, I not only got a description, but pricing information that includes the base invoice price (which gives you a clue as to what the dealer paid), the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and a “target price,” which is a rough idea of what the car can be purchased for.

I also got the site to display side-by-side comparative data for up to four vehicles with pricing, safety features, specifications and even photos.

Using this site, I narrowed the field to the Toyota Avalon XLS, Acura 3.2TL, Buick LeSabre and Volvo S70.

Although Cars.com provided good, basic information, I wanted more.

So, I went to Edmunds.com, which offers reviews and pricing information on new and used cars. The site provides descriptions of the cars, including what’s new for the model year, pros and cons, a subjective review, links to consumer comments, links to competing models, a summary of the warranty, detailed specifications and safety features, and both the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and the dealer invoice price.

The site also lists interior and exterior size, which was particularly useful because I needed a car with a relatively large trunk and room in the back for two teenagers.

Edmunds has similar information for used cars, but for some reason, the price information is not the same as that in the Kelley Blue Book.

I’m not a used-car expert, but every dealer I spoke to uses the Kelley Blue Book as a guide for used-car pricing.

The good news is that the Kelley Blue Book, which offers both used and new pricing information, is online at https://www.kelleybluebook.com. As soon as you select “used-car values” you choose whether you want trade-in or retail. The price of cars sold and bought by private parties is usually somewhere in the middle.

And if you’re thinking of buying a specific used car, be sure to check it out at Carfax.com. For free, the service will tell you whether that vehicle has been registered as a “lemon.” For $14.95 per car, or $19.95 for two months of unlimited use, you can get a full report that includes whether it’s ever been rated “totaled” by an insurance company (making it a “salvaged” vehicle), whether its title history is clean and whether there are reports that the odometer has been rolled back.

The Carfax report also tells you if there is reported flood damage and offers information about the vehicle’s history, including the date and mileage each time it was registered. Carfax gets its data from a variety of public and private sources, including state title and registration records, auto and salvage auctions, consumer protection agencies and, in some states, accident data from police departments.

Thanks to Carfax, I found out that one used car I was considering had been registered by several owners and that it had recently been registered in Florida. But two weeks and 14 miles later, it was registered again in California, suggesting that the car had been trucked out from the East Coast.

However, I ran a Carfax report on the used car I wound up buying and was reassured that it wasn’t a lemon and, just as the dealer said, was originally purchased from another local dealer only two months before I bought it.

To use Carfax, you have to enter the vehicle identification number, a 17-digit code that can be found on the dashboard or door panel of any car or truck built for sale in the U.S. since 1981. Some dealers and private parties include the number in their advertisements.

There are a number of Web sites that let you actually buy a car online. CarsDirect.com, Autobytel.com and Greenlight.com, for example, allow you to agree on a price and purchase your vehicle online. Although you might wind up picking it up from a local dealer, the entire transaction, including the pricing, is done online.

Autobytel has a limited inventory of cars you can buy online, but it’s mostly a referral service that sends you to a local dealer who, in theory, is supposed to offer you a special “Internet price.”

As it turned out, I didn’t buy my car at CarsDirect.com, but I did use the service as part of my research and, in the end, to arm myself with information that helped me negotiate the price I ended up paying a dealer for my Toyota Avalon XLS.

I didn’t buy the car online because a local dealer had a slightly used 2000-model-year car in stock. The dealer was asking nearly $31,500, but I wasn’t about to pay that for a car with 4,800 miles on it knowing that I could buy a brand-new one from CarsDirect for $29,485. So I wound up paying $28,800, which wasn’t exactly a steal, but it was a reasonable amount considering that I got to drive it off the lot that night. Also, because it was already licensed, I also saved a few hundred dollars in licensing fees.

Buying or selling a used car online is a bit dicey, because it’s pretty hard to kick the tires via the Internet. But there are a number of sites that bring buyers and sellers together. AutoTrader.com and Autobytel.com are two of the leading sites with used-car information.

A friend of mine used Autobytel to sell his pickup truck and got plenty of calls, including one that resulted in a sale. Autobytel charges $5.95 to list a car and nothing for buyers to peruse listings, but, if you wish to sell a vehicle, you can place a free ad at Autobytel by entering via Excite.com and clicking on “autos.”

Many of the car-buying and car-research services have links to related sites where you can buy insurance, an extended warranty (typically for less than dealers charge) and other services or products. Even if you’re not in the market for a car, check out Autobytel’s “owners resources” link for recall notices and service schedules.

By the way, my new Toyota Avalon is a pretty nice ride. Thanks to the research I did on the Internet, I wasn’t taken for one.

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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard between 2 and 3 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) “Technology Hour.” He can be reached by e-mail at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com.