Automobile purchase and insurance tips

Car shoppers who have found the automobile they want to purchase should try to determine the lowest selling price the dealer will take for the vehicle. Advice for selecting and purchasing or leasing a new automobile is provided.

Automotive pondits are cautiously bullish on new vehicle sales for 1994. Some forecasters see sales topping 15 million units, which would be better than this year and far ahead of 1992, when light vehicle sales (cars and light trucks) totaled fewer than 12.9 million units.

But while this is encouraging news for the industry, it doesn't necessarily mean that happy days are here again. Even the most optimistic predictions would still leave 1994 sales more than a million units short of their 1986 peak. And at today's prices, a million units could translate to more than $17 billion in sales.

Therefore, neither makers nor dealers can really afford to relax or to start thinking of today's market as one that they can totally control. In the same issue that carried sales forecasts for 1994, the trade weekly Automotive News also reported that "... dealers and industry watchers agree that automotive retailing has changed...The seller's market of the mid-1980s is over."

This is not to say that the customer is now well and truly king, or that manufacturers and dealers are about to stop trying to make every single dollar they can on every transaction. What can be said, however, is that the products, features, financing options and dealer services that are being offered--more than ever before--are today defined by consumer response (or lack thereof) in the automotive market place.

The industry's realization that consumers ultimately drive the market has led to a genuine emphasis on such things as product quality and customer satisfaction. It has also led to an ever-increasing array of vehicles, created in hopes of providing something that will win the fancy of everyone.