Patent ID: 8694328

Claim:
A method of selecting a vehicle for acquisition comprising: generating a profile of an individual interested in purchasing a vehicle, where the profile is based, at least in part, upon information obtained from the individual; identifying target vehicles based at least in part, upon the generated profile of the individual, wherein the target vehicles define vehicle types that may be of interest to the individual and that can satisfy vehicle requirements of the individual; iteratively repeating until a predetermined stopping condition is met: electronically retrieving by a computer processing device, vehicle data for at least selected ones of the target vehicles; identifying at least one candidate vehicle from the identified target vehicles, where each candidate vehicle corresponds to a specific instance of a target vehicle; performing an evaluation of at least one candidate vehicle to obtain both objective and subjective evaluation data comprising: temporarily installing a data logging device into the evaluated candidate vehicle to electronically collect objective data including data that is uniquely associated with the operation of the corresponding evaluated candidate vehicle at the time of the specific evaluation, and electronically storing subjective data that captures the impressions of the individual with regard to the individual's interaction with the corresponding evaluated vehicle; and deriving by the computer processing device, a corresponding acceptance rating for each evaluated candidate vehicle, where each acceptance rating is based at least in part upon the objective data and the subjective data collected from the evaluation of the corresponding selected candidate vehicle; deriving by the computer processing device, a ranking of the evaluated candidate vehicles based upon their derived acceptance rating; and conveying a vehicle acquisition recommendation based upon the ranking of the evaluated candidate vehicles.