5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Car Shopping

1. What size vehicle do I need? 

Your lifestyle should drive this more than your taste. A big, busy family probably needs an SUV or minivan with plenty of cargo and seating room for athletic equipment, musical instruments, luggage, and teammates. If you're usually driving solo, a sedan, hatchback, or compact SUV gets you easier parking and better fuel economy without paying for space you won't use.

Get clear on size first, and you'll stop wasting time test-driving vehicles that were never going to work for your real life.

2. What features do I want? 

Most vehicles now come loaded with gadgets, but what one driver considers essential, another sees as a distraction. If changing lanes makes you nervous, a blind spot detector or lane-departure warning might be non-negotiable. Long commutes make adaptive cruise control genuinely useful. Heated seats and a panoramic sunroof are nice, but they’re more for comfort than safety, so they may be in your “nice-to-have” list.

Sort your list into must-haves, nice-to-haves, and skip-its before you start shopping. It'll keep you from getting talked into an upgrade you don't really need.

3. What can I comfortably afford? 

A common guideline: your total transportation costs, car payment, insurance, gas, and maintenance combined shouldn't eat up more than 10 to 15% of your take-home pay. That's a useful gut check before you fall in love with a monthly payment that looks fine on paper but doesn't leave room for anything else.

Start by looking at your income and regular expenses: rent or mortgage, groceries, utilities, current insurance, and gas. That gives you a concrete number to shop with, rather than a vague sense of "something reasonable." It'll also help you decide early whether you're looking at new, used, or something in between, and whether financing or leasing makes more sense for your situation, since getting pre-approved before you shop puts you in a much stronger position than figuring out financing after you've already picked a car.

4. What are my deal breakers?

Some preferences are worth holding onto. Others are worth letting go of for the right car. You might love the idea of a bright blue paint job, but would you walk away from an otherwise perfect match over the exterior color? Would the wrong size actually ruin the car for you, or just feel like a minor letdown?

Your dealbreakers don't need to make sense to anyone but you. If color or size genuinely matters, don't talk yourself out of it. Just know that a little flexibility on the small stuff usually gets you to the right car faster.

5. What car manufacturer do I like and trust?

Brand loyalty is real, and it applies to cars as much as anything else you buy. Each manufacturer tends to have its own reputation: some for safety ratings, some for long-term reliability, others for interior tech that feels snappy and modern.

Want a heavy-duty workhorse? RAM and a handful of other manufacturers built their reputation on it. Looking for an SUV loaded with features and safety awards? Hyundai and Honda are worth a look. If it's American-made power you're after, you'll probably end up cross-shopping Ford against Chevrolet.

Reviews and reliability scores from J.D. Power and Consumer Reports, plus honest opinions from friends and family who actually own the cars you're considering, round out the picture before you commit to a make.

Bonus questions

The five questions above will get you most of the way there, but a few more are worth asking, too:

• Should I buy new, used, or certified pre-owned? (If used or CPO, always ask for a vehicle history report before you commit.)
• How will I use this vehicle day-to-day?
• How long do I plan to keep it?
• Does this model hold its resale value?
• Can it tow what I need it to?
• What are the long-term maintenance costs?
• Does it get the fuel economy I need? 

Find a new ride at Transwest 

Already have a make in mind, or still weighing a few? Either way, Transwest carries a wide range of new and used vehicles across multiple brands, so you can compare options in one place instead of driving all over town.

Check out our full selection online, or stop by a Transwest location and start narrowing things down in person.