How To Buy A Car ????

Finally I got my very own car !!!!. This blog is primarily a description of my experience in short-listing and buying a car.  The first thing any prospective buyer must decide on is the budget one is willing to spend on a car. Remember that buying a car is not an investment and based on ones need , the budget should be set. Once that is done the next step is to list out the cars which comes within that budget and something which is intuitively pleasing to the owner. In that aspect I had narrowed down to 3 cars. Hyundai Elite i20, Volkswagen Polo and Honda Jazz. Frankly speaking earlier I had shortlisted only i20 and Polo, since during this initial process Jazz was yet to be released in the market. But having seen the great reviews in the abroad market decided to postpone my decision till July 8th when the car was to be launched in India. Hence on the release day and after the test drive Jazz just swooped down and vanquished all its opponents !!!!.

Apart from the below process of shortlisting a car, another factor which steered my decision towards buying the Jazz is that Elite i20 off late has become very common and even after buying my Jazz, I have never come face to face with another Jazz (apart from test drive cars) on the road making it unique and exclusive, atleast for the time being.

Another major aspect which went against elite i20 is that in the mid variant dual airbags are not present , and for me the safety is one of the top priorities. The other determinant which went against i20 was the huge waiting period for the car delivery, apparently 3 whole months (Jazz was delivered to me in 1 week :P). On the other side the factors which went against Polo was the cost of maintenance and spare parts. Hence Jazz emerged the winner , even-though it might not be an undisputed winner in any of the individual evaluation criteria, it was a winner overall, when all these criteria are put together. In summary it was the jack-of-all-trades :P.

The steps one must follow when buying a car (This is not 100% original, I read other blogs too before buying a car :P )

1. Decide on Total Budget
2. Device whether petrol or diesel. Rule of thumb is if driving more than 1500 km/month go for diesel.
3. Shortlisting the final consideration list.
4. Test drive the cars
5. Create a quantitative table with parameters and weightage given according to ones preference.
6. Winner of this table is the BEST CAR FOR YOU.

Below is the sample weightage chart I had created for my choice.

	Jazz SV	Polo Comfortline	Elite i20 Sports
Looks exterior (25)	20	16	22
Looks interior (5)	4	4	4
Safety (15)	15	15	11
Price + ownership cost (15)	12	12	13
Waiting period (5)	5	4	2
Power/Performance (10)	7	6	7
Mileage (5)	5	3	5
Ease of handling (10)	9	8	9
Interior space/headroom/rear legroom etc (10)	10	7	8
Total	87/100	75/100	81/100

Once the car has been selected these are the follow up steps:

1. Pay a token advance and book the car.

2. Do a pre-delivery-inspection of the car, once a car has been allocated to you by the showroom. Bcoz once the car has been registered in your name there is pretty much nothing which can be done to undo it.

3. Simultaneously process the loan if planning to apply. Banks now provide loans for upto 85% of onroad price or 100% of ex-showroom price. 

4. Once loan is processed the paperwork from the showroom will be completed and you are good to take delivery of the car. 

5. You would receive the registration smart card in mail within 40 days of registration.

This entire process right from the budget allocation till the car delivery took around 1.5 months and went like a breeze for us thanks to the showroom guys.