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Buy a Car Off the Internet?

August 23, 2010 65 Comments and 301 Reactions

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The other day, I bought a 2010 Camaro SS off the Internet. More specifically, I bought it from Aaron Smith of Motorphilia. They have an interesting business model. But how I got on Aaron's radar is every bit as interesting a story as the fact that I bought this car, without kicking the tires. And I have some ideas for car dealerships and others who want to understand how a $40,000 product can be sold virtually (oh - and thanks to Aaron Smith's efforts, I didn't pay $40K for the car: he found me a great deal).

It Started With a Blog Post

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about how car dealership websites suck. I was frustrated, because I wanted to comparison shop and found that the dealerships within 50 miles of me (and there are many) all had horrible websites with really difficult navigation, and a lack of useful information. Worse still, they weren't exactly doing much to bring me in for a visit. But I'll get back to that. First, just realize that I wrote this post.

The post populated on Facebook. Aaron Smith from Motorphilia saw the note in his stream and dropped me a line (FOUR MINUTES AFTER THE POST WENT LIVE). He said, "Hey, saw you were looking for a new Camaro. I found a few you might want to hear about. Interested?"

Lesson #1: The people who LISTEN for business beat the people waiting around for business to find them.

Actually, it Started a Year Before All This

In April 2009, I visited GM headquarters. I got to drive a Cadillac CTS and a CTS-V, but then I got to play with the Camaro RS (the littler engine version of the SS). It wasn't even out on the market yet. I felt amazingly blessed.

I should put an aside in to say that I'm not much of a car guy, really. Or I wasn't. I've never owned a "cool" car. I've owned all (but one) GM cars since I stared driving, though, so it wasn't much of a stretch to get interested in a Camaro. And why? Because the newer model looks like the Batmobile, and I'm a Batman kinda guy. (Okay, I know someone will say the Corvette is more like the Batmobile, but they're like an entirely different tribe of people, Vette types, and that's not my thing.)

But Buying A Car Off the Internet?

I admit that it's a little weird to buy a car off the Internet. If I hadn't met Aaron a few times in person (he even gave me a ride around Austin in a Prowler), I might have been a bit less likely to trust a website-based car sale. But, again, when you read Motorphilia's business model, it feels like they're the kind of relationship you want to have.

If I didn't know Aaron, I'd recommend that he put a few pictures of himself and/or his staff on the site. We relate to pictures. In fact, there's a lot of "we" language on the site, and normally, without any sense of who "we" is, that's a potential turnoff. However, and here's the next big lesson:

Lesson: Aaron Smith's @motorphilia efforts in social media are warm, friendly, and always on.

Aaron and team know the value of social media. He's active on Facebook, on Twitter, on their blog, and in several other locations, as well. It's the exact opposite of the mainstream local dealership model. Instead of waiting for people to show up for test drives (and/or sending out flyers and other dead tree products and local commercials), Aaron's team invests time and effort into human-based connections that they hope to translate into sales.

Trust and Buying Something Sight Unseen

I admit that looking at photos of a car that I intend to buy is like moving into a house that you've only seen remotely. It's spooky. It's not how things are done. I further admit that I am a bit strange, in that I buy many things off the Internet, so I'm not your typical mainstream buyer. Finally, I will cop to the admission that I knew that if something went wrong, that I'd raise holy hell about it, and that felt like a great insurance policy. But since I dared to do it, I can vouch for the service.

It Requires a Bit of Awareness and Conviction

I already knew that I wanted a Camaro. I already knew the rough price of the car I wanted. I knew that I didn't want to haggle (my last five cars were Saturns because they sales method is: 'here's the price, no matter who you are.' And all of this really suited the buying scenario of an online purchase. There may or may not have been negotiating room in the price, but I've got to be honest: Aaron found me a car that was $4500 less expensive than the three I'd found within 20 miles from my house (and the one he found me had tons fewer miles - only 1100).

If you needed lots of test drives, or if you wanted to really negotiate and do a lot of hand-holding and tire-kicking, then online obviously wouldn't be a good fit. Also, I can't advocate taking up a dealership's time on test driving, only to buy somewhere else. That wouldn't be the right thing to do.

What Does This Say for Dealerships, Though?

Local car dealerships find themselves in a potential bind. What used to be a sure thing is now far from it. Many car manufacturers had to thin out their dealership relationships over the last few years. Local print and TV media have been decimated making it harder to get a local dealership's ads seen. Location and proximity help keep some customers at hand, but it clearly didn't work for me. Will the rest of the Netflix generation feel that way, too?

And if local dealerships keep avoiding the social web, how many more buyers like me will they miss?

Since writing the first post over a month ago, I never once heard from a dealership within 100 miles of me. I heard from one other online dealership, but that's it. So, no one from the local world claimed my $40,000. It went to Texas.

Obviously, we won't all just buy on the net. We won't all forego test drives. We wont have such an affinity for a product that we'll buy it without a lot of comparison shopping. But there are signals here to consider, and there are opportunities to grow. What follows are a few potential takeaways, and then a couple of videos I shot with thoughts about the car.

Takeaways for Car Dealerships

Make your sites more mobile-friendly. Flash doesn't cut it in the smartphone era.
Add listening tools to your marketing efforts.
Have a social presence, so you can respond and invite in potential buyers.
Work with the manufacturers' social media people, like Christopher Barger at GM and Scott Monty at Ford (and your manufacturers of choice).
Look for alternatives to the current business models, as sales won't rush up on gimmicks and discounts alone.
Consider the after-sale. I just bought a Camaro SS. Do you doubt that I'm prime for aftermarket and/or related offers? Heck, I couldn't even find my tripometer reset until this afternoon. I'd be a perfect candidate to build a deeper relationship with, and you'd have a sales funnel extension.
Equip your buyers with social extenders. People don't buy cars fast enough for you to build a single relationship. Seek the referral, and the share. Not one local dealership had a Facebook Like button next to each make/model.

The rest, I'll let you figure out. Or, you can work with me. I might even have some experience in this field. : )

Now, the Videos

I've never been much of a car person. I'm not one for spending lots of money. I'm definitely not one for spending money on myself (unless it's for business materials). I bought the car because I won't benefit from a cool car when I'm 70. I bought it because I haven't really celebrated my last several years' hard work in any tangible way. I bought it because I wanted my own Batmobile. Here are a few videos related to the experience:

On buying a car through Motorphilia:
(apologies for my hair. It was still wet.)

My first night drive in the Camaro:

Thoughts on Buying a 2010 Chevy Camaro SS:

Thanks for indulging me. It was quite an experience, and I've been dying to tell the story, but had to wait until the car arrived, and/or until all the bits lined up. I haven't ever had a second car for my family, so this will also open up some opportunities in logistics. And hey, it's a darned fun car to drive.

Thank you,
Thomas Ieracitano

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Part One: Internet vs. Traditional Car Buying

How Much Can the Internet Save You?

Published: 11/15/2002 Updated: 04/30/2009 - by Philip Reed, Senior Consumer Advice Editor, Edmunds.com

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Part One: Internet vs. Traditional Car Buying

On-line vs. traditional: Which do you prefer - walking onto a car lot and going eye to eye with the salesman? Or will you get a better price through the Internet department?

There are two entrances into today's new car dealership.

The first entrance is the traditional one where customers walk onto the car lot, wait for a salesman to approach them, hear the sales pitch and then hash out a deal in a sales office.

The new entrance leads into the "virtual dealership." Shoppers can read car reviews, scope out photos and price their dream cars - all on the Internet.

Which of these two paths to new car ownership result in a lower price for the consumer? And, which of these two approaches will be the most pleasant buying experience for shoppers?

This article has two parts. The first will gather the opinions of several Internet car salespeople and describe the Internet sales experience for shoppers. The second article will test these opinions in real-world shopping conditions. Taken together, they should give you, the consumer, the most up-to-date information about your best way to buy your new car.

The Creation of the Internet Department

Traditionally, dealers have sought to maximize their profit by keeping most of the figures in a deal hidden. In this way dealers charge customers whatever they can convince them to pay for a car. Because of the complexity of a transaction filled with many variables (trade-in value, interest rate, different loan terms, multiple fees) buyers often didn't even know how much they are really paying for the car.

But in the late 1990s, Web sites such as Edmunds.com began publishing the invoice prices of cars while also reaching a larger segment of the car-buying public. This neutralized the car salesman's most powerful weapon: confusion. A smart shopper could find the invoice price of the car he wanted to buy, add a 2-3 percent profit and make a take-it-or-leave-it cash offer. Car salesmen hated dealing with this type of buyer because their profit was lower.

But rather than lose this buyer all together, some dealerships began creating "Internet departments." With an Internet department, informed shoppers could bypass the traditional salespeople standing outside the dealership. (One Internet saleswoman called these salesmen "the vultures.") Instead, shoppers could contact Internet salespeople, either by phone or e-mail, and quickly get a bottom-line price. If the price was good, they bought the car. If it wasn't, they got another quote from another dealership. This reduced the haggling.

Even today, however, many people don't trust the Internet. They don't believe the car-buying process can be that easy.

Who is the Internet Saleperson?

The Internet salesperson might have once been a traditional car salesperson, but his computer skills and ability to correspond via e-mail, monitor Web sites and grasp the psychology of on-line buyers made them a natural for this position. In other cases, the Internet sales manager might also double as the dealership's fleet manager.

For an Internet department, it is more important to sell a lot of cars than it is to maximize profit on individual cars. Therefore, the initial price quotes from an Internet sales manager are often very close to the absolute lowest selling price for a given vehicle.

A Typical Internet Experience

Edmunds.com maintains a fleet of test cars, some of which we purchase ourselves. When shopping for a 2002 Nissan Altima, we searched for the exact car we wanted on the Internet. We located a car, with the options we wanted, at Lew Webb's Irvine Nissan and sent a request for a price quote to the dealership via e-mail.

A short time later, Internet Sales Manager Marj Aldoph wrote back, describing the options on the car and the color. She also wrote: "Your preferred Internet price is $27,417 plus tax and license." We compared the price to the Edmunds.com True Market Value^® price and saw that her price quote was even lower. We bought the car at that price.

After the sale was finalized, we asked Aldoph if we could have gotten a better deal on a new car if we just walked onto the lot. "I would never walk onto a lot to buy a car," she replied. "I don't want to go through all the hassle." Besides that, she said, the sales team will start by trying to sell the car at sticker price. Plus, they will try to make more money on the back end, such as higher finance charges. "[In the Internet department] we are straightforward and disclose everything. Nothing is pushed onto a client."

Denise Justice, the Internet and client service manager for Rusnak Auto Group in Pasadena, Calif., said, "I like to be up-front with all my customers. I show them all the numbers. I don't try to hide things or put extras into the contract at the last minute. I don't want any misunderstandings."

When Rusnak wanted to develop its Internet department, it recruited Justice from Nordstrom because of that company's reputation for customer service. Now, Justice uses her skills to sell 15 to 20 cars a month (more than most car lot salespeople), often to customers who never physically come into the dealership.

"The Internet customer doesn't want the traditional sales pitch," she said. "They don't want to sit down and do the four-square [a worksheet used by salesmen for negotiating]. They won't play that game where the salesman starts high and goes low. They've already done their homework and, in some cases, they know more about the car than I do."

Justice said that women, in particular, prefer car shopping on-line because many Internet sales managers are women. "Women buy from me because I'm easy to talk to," she said. "I'm not like some men who won't give straight answers or may be intimidating."

However, the Internet can be a grind for those brave enough to work in this department. One Las Vegas Internet manager told us that he gets hundreds of e-mails a day, everyday. "They expect a reply almost instantly or you've lost their business. I spend a lot of time on-line, just going through my e-mail."

Justice said she works on salary with some commission. How much of what she makes is dependant on the scores on her "CSI" surveys (customer satisfaction index). "If I get dinged by even one person, for one point (getting a 4 out of 5 rather than a 5 out of 5) it can cost me $1,500," she said.

Moving Metal the Old Way

The traditional car salesperson greets "ups" (customers who walk onto the lot) and personally leads them through the buying process. Car salesmen employ a variety of psychological tactics to excite the buyer, hurry them toward a commitment to buy and then sell the car at the highest possible price. Often, car salesmen are told they should "never leave any money on the table" - in other words, they should take as much money as they can from the buyer.

While the Internet clearly offers advantages to many consumers, some buyers are still more comfortable buying the traditional way. They want the sales pitch, they want to test drive the car and get a "walk around" from an experienced sales professional. Dealership sales managers still firmly believe in this approach to selling - trying to turn everyone into a "today buyer." These veterans tell trainees "the feel of the wheel will seal the deal." Their pep talks center on trying to "excite" buyers and maintain "control" over the buyer.

However, as consumers learn more about the car-buying process and our society becomes increasingly mobile, loyalties to the neighborhood dealership are disappearing. As a car buyer, knowing you got a good vehicle at a fair price - all without battling a pushy salesman for several hours - isn't asking too much. In the end, time is money and cash is king.

COMING NEXT: Edmunds.com goes car shopping. An editor will get a price the traditional way from a car lot salesman, then solicit a quote through the Internet department. How do these prices compare? Find out in Part Two.

View more Car Buying and Leasing articles

Thank you,
Thomas Ieracitano

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CarsDirect is the best place to buy new cars and used cars online

CarsDirect is the best place to buy new cars
and used cars online!

CarsDirect.com has been rated the #1 site for buying new cars online by Forbes, Time, PC Magazine and PC World, among others.

We offer low, no-haggle prices and have a huge selection of new and used cars for sale. To find the CarsDirect price for any new vehicle, begin by selecting the make at the top of this page.

If you choose to buy a new car online through CarsDirect, a Vehicle Specialist will contact you quickly and help you through the entire car buying process.

If you prefer to buy your next new car from a dealer, we will match your needs with a member of our certified dealer network near you. Your VIP dealer representative will work with you to find your vehicle and negotiate a low price.

Searching for cars for sale on many used car websites can be a challenge. You can search and buy using our intuitive used car search section. We offer a huge selection newer model year pre-owned cars. Finding the right used car for sale has never been more convenient.

Thousands of happy customers buy cars through us every month. Who knew it was so easy to buy new cars online?

Thank you,
Thomas Ieracitano

Leasing or Buying a Car Resources on the Web

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Buying a Car on the Internet

If you're thinking about buying a car over the Internet, then you're going to be pleasantly surprised. Buying a car on the World Wide Web is a fairly simple process. It also eliminates a lot of the unpleasant experiences often associated with a visit to the local car dealership.

Advantages of Buying a Car Using the Internet

If you happen to sell cars for a living and you're honest in your dealings with customers, then you shouldn't be offended by any of the following statements we're going to make in this publication. That's because we're not talking about salespersons and dealerships that treat their customers fairly.

Buying a Car at a Dealership

Additional Resources

We're talking about individuals selling cars that give car dealers a bad name. For some of us, this is what we actually experience when we bought a car in the past:

Bait and Switch Tactics - working with a salesperson to purchase one type of car, only to find that salesperson is now trying to get you to buy another car.
Haggling - while some people might actually like the idea of negotiating with a salesperson in the hopes of striking the best purchase price on a new car, to many of us that entire process is pretty upsetting.
Hard Sells - if there is one thing that any salesperson learns through experience it is that you need to close the deal. Some salespersons simply don't know when to give up, and high-pressure sales tactics, which occur at some car dealerships, are annoying to virtually everyone.

Buying a Car Online

The nice thing about buying a car over the Internet is that all of the negative face-to-face interactions are eliminated. You can research your car from the comfort of your own home, and you can take your time making a decision. One big advantage of buying a car this way is there's a lot of information right at your fingertips.

Buy a Car Online in Four Simple Steps

For anyone convinced that buying a car over the Internet offers some big advantages, we've outlined a "how to buy a car online in four simple steps" below:

Conduct research to find the car you think you want to buy.
Test-drive several of the cars you've identified in your research.
Research cars again to make sure you're making the right decision.
Comparison shop new car dealers over the Internet.

Later on, we'll be talking about websites you can visit to buy a car online. But for now we're going to explain how to conduct your research, test-drive a car, and how to make fair comparisons. This way you can be sure you're getting the best deal.

Researching a Car over the Internet

We've covered researching a car elsewhere in this publication in much greater detail than explained below. The important part of this first step is to figure out what features you need in a car, and which cars provide you with those features.

Some of the more important factors to consider when researching a car include:

Budget - perhaps the single most important consideration is how much car you can afford to buy. We have some great car loan calculators that can help to simplify this step.
Use of Car - are you playing taxi driver to your kids and their friends, or are you looking for basic transportation to and from work? This is the "practical" part of car research.
Reliability and Safety - for many people a car must not only be able to move us from point A to point B, but it also needs to provide us with reliable and safe operation.

Test Driving a Car You're Thinking about Buying

If you think you can buy a car only using the Internet, then we have some bad news for you. Even if you think a certain car will meet all your needs, you have to test drive the vehicle. The last thing you want to do is to pick up your car and discover that it has a blind spot that makes you nervous when you drive, or the interior color didn't look like the pictures you saw.

If you're not an "average" person with respect to height or weight (many of us are not average), then it's important to make sure you have enough room in the vehicle to drive or sit comfortably.

Unless friends or relatives own all of the cars you're thinking about buying, then you have to visit a car dealership to conduct your test drives. Since you're thinking about ultimately buying the car over the Internet, you need to be careful about working too closely with a salesperson. If you do, they might try to claim you owe them a sales commission.

Keep in mind that even if you buy a car online, the dealership might be the same one you visited when you test drove the car; especially if there aren't many competing dealerships in your area. If that's true, then the dealership might owe a sales commission to someone if you've been working with them on a regular basis.

Researching a Car: Again

Now that you've narrowed down the field of cars that you can afford, meets your list of requirements, and you enjoy driving, it's time to double back on your car research. This is especially true if you're having trouble deciding between two makes / models.

Here we are talking about customer satisfaction ratings, fuel economy, safety and reliability. You can probably go back to some of the same sources you used earlier, but the information you're looking for may be a bit different. Taking one last look at what others are saying usually helps to solidify a decision.

Comparison Shopping for Cars over the Internet

The final step in our four step process is comparison shopping. This involves not just comparing offers, but also evaluating those offers versus the car's invoice price. Here's where the Internet really comes in handy when buying a car.

There are some websites that will actually quote you a price for a new car without any questions asked. Other sites want you to provide them with some of your contact information before sending you a quote. We're going to finish this topic up by listing some of the major players in this market, and what you can expect as far as the car purchasing services offered by their websites.

Kelley Blue Book

Kelley Blue Book built its reputation on its used car pricing expertise; the KBB of today offers new and used car buyers much more. Services you'll find at KBB include:

New Car Pricing
Used Car Trade In Values
Side by Side Car Comparisons
Ratings and Reviews
Buying Advice
Financing and Insurance Tools
Used Car Listings
Dealer Price Quotes (requires information before quote)

MSN Autos (Formerly Carpoint)

MSN Autos also allows you to research cars and make side-by-side comparisons. MSN's approach is to leverage the power of its entire network. Some of the information, such as financing and advice, is not as focused on cars as the information you'll find elsewhere.

The total array of services offered exclusively by MSN Autos includes:

New Car Pricing
Side by Side Comparisons
Ratings and Reviews (from Consumer Reports)
Buying Advice
Dealer Price Quotes (requires information before quote)

Edmunds

Edmunds is another website dedicated to car buying and research. Edmunds has some unique approaches to the logical ways people buy a car, such as sorting cars by price. Other services include:

New Car Pricing
Side by Side Car Comparisons
Ratings and Reviews
Buying Advice
Used Car Listings
Dealer Price Quotes (requires information before quote)

CarsDirect

One of the unique features of CarsDirect is that they provide price quotes without requiring you to supply any of your contact information. That's a big plus if you're just trying to get a feel for how much you can get off the MSRP (or sticker price).

Perhaps the most comprehensive approach to buying a car over the Internet, services offered by CarsDirect include:

New Car Pricing
Used Car Trade In Values
Side by Side Car Comparisons
Ratings and Reviews
Buying Advice
Financing and Insurance Tools
Used Car Listings
Dealer Price Quotes

About the Author - Buying a Car on the Internet

Thank you,
Thomas Ieracitano

Twitter

want a website or an email like this ? go to http://123BrandMe.com

Impact Local Search with the New Bing Business Portal

Microsoft set out to change the way users interact with search engines when they released Bing over two years ago. Now as Bing continues to grow its market share, the company has greatly overhauled their local search platform. The brand new Bing Business Portal is a fresh take on the company's previous clunky interface that is packed full of exciting new features to help local business grow online.

This new portal is geared toward providing the business with all the necessary signals that all the Search Engines are interested in. This new portal should be optimized along with Google Places, Facebook Places, Yahoo Local, and other geospecific services.

Local search optimization is a thriving topic for small business owners. No longer does your business just need a website to compete. Companies that have a "brick and mortar" or physical location need to be aware of how the major search engines view both their website and their location. You can get started with the Bing Business Portal by searching for your listing. Creating a listing for your business is an easy process that begins with verification. Verify ownership of the business listing by phone or if that option is not available, Bing will send a PIN through postal mall.

The Bing Business Portal is full of features including the ability to add not only logos and photos, but detailed features and unique information about your business. Bing allows the business owners and marketing agents to customize the listings by adding links to Facebook and Twitter pages. All of the information added is designed to increase the relevancy for Bing as it matches your listing with the users.

Bing is also aware of the growing number of mobile phone users that are accustomed to looking for local businesses while on the go. Similar to the Bing application for smartphones, this new Business Portal will create a mobile website for your business. A unique feature of the Bing Business Portal is the ability to create deals and coupons along with QR codes to aid in offline promotion. These deals can be customized with unique categories of discount coupons, rebates, and will be seen on the mobile Bing site (m.bing.com). Business owners even have the ability to publish deals directly to their Facebook pages. Restaurants and bars can create custom mobile menus, upload PDFs, and link to existing online menus.

Business owners will be able to pick and choose from all the publishing options in the preview section of the portal. Check out your Bing listings, your mobile website, and any additional features before releasing them to the world. Bing notes that some of the content may be reviewed prior to publishing, but doesn't say if that review will be by human or machine.

It will be interesting to see how much support Bing is able to provide their small business owners. A common complaint from users of Google Places is lack of help available to owners. As part of the BETA, the new Bing Business Portal incorporates comic book styled help for individual sections of the process. This is likely to help differentiate Bing from the more text heavy help sections of Google, while still providing the answers. Only time will tell if business owners and the search traffic will flock to this new portal, but it's certainly a sign that Bing will continue to evolve in hopes of becoming the preferred search option for users.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Kevin Doory, Online Strategist

Kevin became part of the team at Groove Commerce in September of 2010. He brings years of hands-on experience with search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing for both in-house and agency capacities. Kevin garnered a wide range of experience in managing clients, streamlining processes, and developing analytics-driven strategies while helping to build search departments from the ground up in multiple industries.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Go Like Hell book about Ford beating Ferrari at Le Mans being turned into a movie

**Report: Go Like Hell book about Ford beating Ferrari at Le Mans being turned into a movie**

by Jeff Glucker (RSS feed) on May 31st 2011 at 7:59AM

Ford versus Ferrari? These two car companies seemingly have nothing in common today. Back in the 1960s, however, things were a bit different. Ferrari ruled the world of Motorsports, and Ford was vying for a piece of that international glory.

Starting in 1960, a Ferrari won the 24 Hours of Le Mans six years in a row. Ford wanted to put a stop to that, and in 1966, the Blue Oval entered the winning GT40 Mk II, which ended Ferrari's amazing streak. That was just the beginning, however, because a Ford GT40 would go on to win at Le Mans for the next three years.

The story about these battling automakers was captured in a book written by A.J. Baime, called Go Like Hell. This book takes readers into the heart of the road racing war that was waged over 50 years ago.

Now, the story has captured the attention of Hollywood. Director Michael Mann is in talks with 20th Century Fox to turn Go Like Hell into a movie. This presents us with some interesting questions. Most notably, we wonder which actors will be cast to play the various roles of larger-than-life motorsports icons. Have you got a good idea of who might fit a specific part? Sound off in the Comments.

[Source: HollywoodReporter.com]

Thank you,
Thomas Ieracitano