When the time comes to finally buy your first car, we know that it’s incredibly exciting. You wake up every day, and you head online to start shopping around for your perfect car, and you begin to imagine how you would look driving every car you see.

While we know all of this happens, the one thing you need to remember is that the people that sell cars know this too and they are just waiting for you to arrive. One of the biggest problems with modern car buying is that a lot of the people that sell cars are banking on the fact that you may not know a damn thing about cars.

Taking this into account, you should be taking care and also be finding ways to educate yourself into the world of cars. Now, we don’t expect you to head out and take a course in mechanics, instead, we just think it may be a great idea to arm yourself with enough car buying knowledge to protect you while you are car shopping.

In this post, we are going to be looking at some of the things you should be taking into account when you are hitting the forecourts and shopping for cars.

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Be Wary Of View By Appointments

If you have spent a good deal of time online shopping for cars, you may have noticed a lot of car dealers that advertise the car they are selling as a view by appointment only. While on occasion this can be innocent enough, the chances are this car will not be all it’s cracked up to be.

When buying a car, you should always try to make sure that you don’t give the dealer any notice of your visit. If a dealer is telling you that you have to book a time slot, this is often a way for them to warm up the car and hide any little noises for a test drive.

If you find a car that you love and it’s by appointment only, you should check when you arrive that the car is cold and even ask to see under the bonnet without the car being started. If the car is cold to the touch, this is a great sign, and you should get it out on a test drive while it’s cold.

Avoid Huge Car Dealers

One of the best pieces of advice that we can give you is to stay away from huge dealers as a lot of the time you are going to find yourself lumped with a car that may be riddled with problems.

The truth behind these places is while they may appear to be the next best thing to a main dealer, they are generally just a production line for random used cars and a lot of the checks conducted are done quickly not well.

If you want value for money, then smaller companies like the Affordable Cars and many others are great options. They are not too big that they have to ignore the little details, and you will also find that the level of customer care you get from companies this size is second to none. 

Don’t rule out electric cars! They can be incredibly cost-effective if you’re educated on these types of cars as well as being great for the environment.

First of all, it should be known that not all electric and electrified cars are the same. In the first place there are the hybrids, with a double engine: a combustion engine, which acts as the main one, and an electric one, in which the battery is recharged with the engine itself or when it reduces its speed. Second, there is the plug-in hybrid, in which the battery can also be recharged directly from a socket. Finally, the 100% electric, with exclusively electric propulsion and recharging from the socket. In the case of vehicles that need a power outlet to recharge, they have two types of recharging point: public and private. Any user can install a charging station in their private or community garage, as long as it is installed by a licensed professional and meets the legal requirements. And if it is necessary to power the car on the road, the electrical supply network is growing day by day. Today, the EU has about 100,000 points and the European Commission predicts that by 2025 this figure will have multiplied by 20, to 2 million stations. If you are concerned about finding electric car charging points, you can find out where there are places to do this and you will find that there are a significant amount of charging points. 

Electric vehicles are becoming more accessible. Technological improvement helps reduce the price of electric models. For example, the cost of batteries has dropped by 80% in the last decade.