How Do You Make The Best Used Car Decisions?

What’s your deciding factor when buying used cars?

There are so many items to consider; everyone’s decision making process is different. Once the vehicle make and model have been chosen, what are the key elements shoppers focus on?

Here are the results of a visitors poll conducted on this site:

• Price: 43%
• Vehicle History: 26%
• Gas Mileage/Fuel Economy: 23%
• Dealership Reputation: 7%
• Safety Rating: 0%
• Other: 2%

Price and fuel economy shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone given our current state of instability and rising costs across the board.

I’m surprised vehicle safety rating didn’t register any votes. One school of thought is the basic comfort level consumers have with standard safety features available today. Most modern vehicles have anti-lock brakes, airbags and crumple-zone features.

I wonder how the results would vary if the poll responders were the parents of the driver. Safety ratings may be a higher rated factor in those situations.

What’s your most important factor?

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