How To Buy A Used Car: Step 2 The Hunt, Searching For Your Next Ride.

With Elon Musk's announcement last year that Telsa Motors will allow its patents to be "open source," it seemed like a good time to lift up Daily Turismo's skirt and expose a little of our intellectual property.  Unfortunately DT's trade secrets are about as valuable as a bunch of pie-in-the-sky patents for technology that neither manufacturer nor consumer wants to touch -- but that won't stop us from trying to protect it with lawyers share it with the world.  Coincidentally, this is (the long overdue) Step 2 in Daily Turismo's How To Buy A Used Car (HTBAUC) series.

How To Buy A Used Car: Step 4: Test Drive, Inspection & PPI Checklist

Step 4:  Test Drive & Inspection:  How to inspect a car in person (or by remote PPI) and how not to be taken for a ride on the first date.  We give you the goods on what to do when you take a look at the car you are buying -- including key items you always want to check and a detailed checklist of other things you need to look at.

You may have noticed that we published part 1 of DT's 6-part series on How to Buy a Used Car but we got busy with other things and have neglected to publish the next parts as promised.  We have no excuse other than being busy, but to the rescue comes Ian and Kim Lomax, founders of Jewel or Jalopy who offered to write up part 4...well...as they say in the vending machine industry...better out of order than out of mind! 

DT How to Buy a Used Car: Step 1a. Value Matrix

Narrowing Down Your List of Potential Next Cars

We assume our readers are car nuts like us, and if that is the case then we know it can be difficult to decide which type of car you should choose for your next daily turismo. Automotive ADD is a spectacular thing and lets you appreciate many different makes, models, body styles, vintages, ad infinitum. But when it's time to narrow down your list of potential vehicles and start focusing on one or two models, it can be a tough proposition for some.

However, we have found a nerdy but effective way to parse out the lame ducks and bring the winners to the top of the list: a scored selection spreadsheet that we call the "DT Value Matrix." This might sound intimidating but is really just a way to assign numerical scores to the attributes that are important to you in your next car.

DT How to Buy a Used Car: Step 1. Research

Know why you want what you want.

This feature will focus on the pre-search research that everyone should do before starting the used car hunt, including understanding what options, availability, and specs are for the car you want. We will point you to the best websites and best people to call for guidance (yes - there are people who will pick up the phone and explain to you why you shouldn't buy a particular SAAB...or any SAAB for that matter...).

DT Special Feature: How to Buy a Used Car

We at the Daily Turismo would like to introduce a few feature articles that may be of interest to our readers, starting with this article on How to Buy a Used Car.  Buying a used car is not a simple process like reading the reviews in Primedia owned print magazines regarding your next new car and making a decision based on the results of comparisons that are in turn based on advertising dollars....  Buying a used car is a much more complex process that involves searching websites, dodging scammers on the web, liars on the phone and cannibals in person.  But we've broken the basic requirement in 6 steps as follows: