A. Car buying over the Internet is still in its infancy, while car research has been around for a while. The Internet, by far, has had the greatest impact on new and used car pricing, as dealers now understand that informed buyers need merely surf for a few minutes to come up with the dealer invoice cost, holdbacks and rebates, and sticker pricing that are necessary to distinguish a great deal from a bad one. The days of haggling with a car salesman are numbered. Reasons for that include the new approaches taken by General Motors' Saturn division, plus the no-haggling pricing policies espoused by Wayne Huizenga's AutoNation USA and Circuit City's CarMax. Give Cars Direct your information, including first and second choices for a number of options, and Cars Direct will buy the car from a dealer and deliver it to you.
Prices appear to be competitive with what is available via the Internet.
You arrange you own financing, or Cars Direct will help you with loan applications. I have never be able to successfully negotiate a car deal totally over the Internet, but the closest I have ever come to that happened recently. Trying to find a new suburban personnel carrier for my wife, none of the local dealers I contacted had the model we wanted. They actually had much of their inventory posted on the Internet. The dealer encouraged users to e-mail if they were looking for a car that was not on the list.