"Do Your Homework"

Throughout this book you will find the term "Do Your Homework" but what does this mean?

The choice of purchasing another vehicle all started with a conversation or an advertisement in somebody saying:

• "I think we should look at getting a new car."

• "I just had our car in for service and it looks like it could cost us some serious money to get it fixed. Maybe we should take a look at trading it in."

• "You know it would be much easier for everybody to get around if we had another vehicle."

• I am glad to see Billy was accepted into college, but you know he is going to need a car to get back and forth to college."

• "Our car is really getting up in age and a car doesn't get better because it is older. Why don't we see what is being offered?"

It can be anyone of these statements that could start the buying process but where do you begin? Most people, their families or even yourself have had an experience with some brand of vehicle. Most of the time the experience goes back to when you first started to drive. You will remember the car brand your parents were driving. If your parents were happy with the brand, they will tell you all of their great experiences. If they had trouble with the vehicle you will remember their upset. So if this brand is suitable you will end up buying this brand and will continue buying this brand unless something changes.

Now you say what could possibly motivate me to change the brand of the car I love? Sometimes the brand just goes out of business, which became very apparent between 2000 and 2017. This isn't something new. It goes back to the beginning of history with the automobile industry. Sometimes you have a bad experience where the vehicle was constantly in the repair shop. You get disgusted and swear you will never buy that brand of vehicle ever again. Still there are some times a new brand is established or a current brand brings out a fantastic new model. These are all valid reasons for switching a brand. So where do you start?

The first thing you need to do is to select a brand. In today's market the quality of most new cars and trucks are very good. Do any of the brands have a problem? Sure they do for every vehicle produced is a mechanical piece of equipment and they can break. So you need to do some homework.

There are numerous magazines, periodicals and books telling you about the quality of a vehicle. They not only tell you about the quality, but they also tell you about repair history, crash tests, the costs of maintenance and more. All of these items you need to take into consideration when making a brand selection. The magazines rate the vehicles giving you their opinion from the performance of the engine and drive system to power equipment, paint and noises.

They will give you a ten years history into crash tests. They will give you their opinion concerning the performance and reliability of the car. They will even show you the price ranges for each vehicle. So the information is available either on the Internet, in books or in periodicals. It is called "Doing Your Homework"!

There are numerous brand assortments for you to choose so it can be confusing. So let's look at your options. Many still say the imported vehicles are better than the domestic vehicle. Is this statement still true or is it a myth?

The perception of the quality in the domestic car came about in the late 1970's through early 1990's. The big three at the time were having some quality issues and the imports started arriving in the United States with great quality and reliability. The big three didn't get this at the time and they left the imports get a stronghold in this country.

Today things have changed. The computer age has arrived along with robots making the quality of a vehicle a non-event. Every vehicle made today with the exception of some very expensive vehicles are made by machine. Every vehicle coming off the line is double-checked to make sure the quality standards of the manufacturer are respected. The thinking that a domestic brand vehicle is produced in the United States is wrong. Some of the domestic brands are actually produced and assembled in other countries. So why are domestic brands importing? It is called having a global society! Basically it allows them to stay competitive with the imports. The cost of labor, taxes, benefits, real estate, and total overhead are less when going to another country to produce a vehicle. So how do you know if your selected brand is foreign or domestic? You simply need to take a look at the first number or letter of the vehicle identification number (VIN). This number is located on the driver's side of the dashboard. It is also located either on the driver side door or door jam. So you really need to know what is a VIN.

A Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is the string of 17 numbers and letters that an automobile manufacturer assigns to an individual vehicle. The VIN can reveal a number of things about a car, including its airbag type, country of origin, engine size, and model, years and trim level.

EXAMPLE: VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER 1 HG BH41 J X M N 108965

The next two numbers or letters in the VIN designates the manufacturers. The next few pages are simply the World Manufacturer Identifier charts. The first three numbers or letters in the VIN are shown. For Example: 1FA represents Ford Motor Company USA while 9BF shows Ford Motor company Brazil.

The balance of the VIN will show you the car line series, the body type, restraint system, engine, check digit, year and assembly plant.

So if you reference the information shown above you will know exactly if the vehicle was an import and if so where did the vehicle originate.

So is the vehicle you are pursuing an import or is it a domestic produced vehicle?

Most often the consumer associates quality with reliability. Some will still argue a Japanese manufactured vehicle is still more reliable than something produced in the United States. This is clearly perception and it may or it may not be true.

There is no production vehicle today that is 100% perfect. If a vehicle were perfect there would be no service bays at any dealership, for anything, other than oil changes or routine maintenance. When you realize this you can comprehend that no vehicle is perfect. If a vehicle is 99% perfect you would say this is a great history, but if a vehicle has over 15,000 moving parts which means 1% of these parts will break over the next 5 years. You can do the math.

In most cases, people search for a quality vehicle with high safety standards. If this is important you can find the brands with the best safety rating on the Internet or in a publication.

If...