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There is a LW post about rational home buying.But how to rationally buy a car?
I don't have the knowledge to give a full post, but I absolutely hate car repair. And if you buy a used car, there's a good chance that someone is selling it because it has maintenance issues. This happened to me, and no matter how many times I took the car to the mechanic it just kept having problems.
On the other hand, new cars have a huge extra price tag just because they're new. So the classic advice is to never buy a new car, because the moment you drive it off the lot it loses a ton of value instantly.
Here are a couple ideas for how to handle this:
Buy a car that's just off a 2 or 3 year lease. It's probably in great shape and is less likely to be a lemon.There are companies that only sell off-lease cars.
Assume a lease that's in its final year. (at http://www.swapalease.com/lease/search.aspx?maxmo=12 for example) Then you get a trial period of 4-12 months, and will have the option to buy the car. This way you'll know if you like the car or not and if it has any issues. The important thing to check is that the "residual price" that they charge for buying the car is reasonable. See this article for more info on that: http://www.edmunds.com/car-leasing/buying-your-leased-car.html
There are a ton of articles out there on how to negotiate a car deal, but one suggestion that might be worth trying is to negotiate and then leave and come back the next day to make the purchase. In the process of walking out you'll probably get the best deal they're going to offer. You can always just come back ten minutes later and make the purchase--they're not going to mind and the deal isn't going to expire (even if they say it is).
If you really hate repairs, doesn't it make much more sense just to lease yourself?
My real solution was not to own a car at all. Feel free to discount my advice appropriately!
lease will usually end up more expensive but you pay-by-the-month so it can be affordable to some people. (that's how lease companies profit)
In the usual way: figure out your budget, figure out your requirements, look at cars in the intersection of budget and requirements and, provided the subset is not null, pick one which you like the most.
I suspect
however the rest:
seems sound.
Its intent was to point out that purchasing cars is not qualitatively different from purchasing any other thing and that the usual heuristics one uses when buying, say, a computer, apply to buying cars as well.
Purchasing cars often requires haggling. Purchasing computers rarely does.
Also, cars are often bought used and it is in the interests of the salesman to conceal information about the used car from you such as hidden problems. Computers are more rarely bought used, rarely have hidden problems that can impair their long-term functioning but are not obvious, and when bought used are often not bought for a price high enough that it's even worth the seller's effort to deceive you about the status of the computer. Furthermore, computers cam be bought in pieces and cars cannot.
I wonder if this will help:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mv8/general_buying_considerations/
I wrote it to be general; if you consider each point with whether it relates or not; then you will be a lot closer to criteria.