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How to buy a Car leveraging the knowledge base on the Internet

I spent the last week researching new cars for our daughter. I currently have 80,000 miles on my Ford minivan and we felt that it was time to get a new family car that she would drive. Given that background - our research started with safety ratings.

As every parent can understand, the safety of a new driver is utmost. (especially if the driver is your son or daughter)

A couple of websites that helped me understand what is important in the safety of a vehicle are here:

• Safer Car.gov
• International Institute for Highway Safety

Given the top ratings for safety (and the fact that we were going to buy from either GM, Ford or Chrysler) - we narrowed our choices between the Ford Taurus, Ford Edge, Ford Escape and Saturn VUE.

After test driving all three of our finalists and using Ford's Cool "Build a Car" Tool - we narrowed the selection to the Vue (which my daughter liked best) and the Ford Edge which seemed like the best value at this time. A couple of the dealerships that we checked had a number of 2008 models on the lot that were fantastic deals.

We got a number of fairly accurate vehicle quotes from Autos.com.

Any hints from our readers? Votes? Suggestions? Good experiences? Bad experiences?

The price difference (when it was all said and done) was $3,000 (The Edge was more expensive). The Vue gets better gas mileage (19 versus 16 in the city).

The Ford Edge is longer and has more leg room. The Vue's styling is more appealing to a teenager and younger buyers. Both of them have side air bags (a must for our purchase).

We will be making our decision tonight and I'll let everyone know what the deciding factors were!!

New Car Pricing and the best deals right now!

Labels: New Car Pricing and Comparisons