mtanski "you should really rent the car for a couple days." Exactly!
This what we do when we are car shopping. Normal cycle is to start looking when the existing car hits the 8% mark in unscheduled maintenance (or 150K miles) (your percentage may vary). Once we close in on the model we like we find a rental and drive it for a week. If it passes we find a dealer, get the model and what we want on it and then shop that info around between multiple dealers in the area.
We never use the existing car to trade in since most are 10 years old and have lots of mileage on them. When we pick up the new car we will offer it to the dealer as a trade and decide at that point if we want to sell it to them. Last cycle the dealer said he would give us another $200 off the deal if he didn't need to take the trade.
This what we do when we are car shopping. Normal cycle is to start looking when the existing car hits the 8% mark in unscheduled maintenance (or 150K miles) (your percentage may vary). Once we close in on the model we like we find a rental and drive it for a week. If it passes we find a dealer, get the model and what we want on it and then shop that info around between multiple dealers in the area.
We never use the existing car to trade in since most are 10 years old and have lots of mileage on them. When we pick up the new car we will offer it to the dealer as a trade and decide at that point if we want to sell it to them. Last cycle the dealer said he would give us another $200 off the deal if he didn't need to take the trade.