The car that you decide to buy is an important decision — not one to take lightly or to make without checking every possible detail you can about the car. Remember that you're going to spend a large amount of your time in your car — often early in the morning (possibly before you've had that first cup of coffee or tea) or after work when you're tired. You want this environment to be as comfortable and agreeable as possible.

You want to go down to a dealer and actually test drive any vehicle that you're considering purchasing, of course. You can do most things on the Internet when buying a car, but you can't get into it and feel the seats, or see how it handles on corners.

As I discuss in Part 2 (The First Steps in Buying a car Online), getting the actual feel of the vehicle is essential before you commit yourself to it for several years. (After all, you wouldn't marry someone you'd just met on a TV show, now, would you?)

The Internet, however, can provide you with information about what to look for in a "real-world" test drive. Or you can find data to substantiate your assessment of a vehicle after the fact. You can, for example, read other people's descriptions of their experiences driving the same car. Their comments may even suggest ideas to you — certain preferences of which you aren't even aware.

I remember reading a while back, for example, about how much someone liked the drink-holders in a particular car. I suddenly realized that for years I'd put up with trying to balance a bottle next to the emergency brake or with buying those funky little plastic holders that hang off the window well and bang against it. Obviously, I'd still buy a great car even if it didn't have drink-holders, but with all other things equal, I'd certainly prefer one with a place where I can set my 7-Up.

Another tactic for obtaining more information about a vehicle is to use the AOL Decision Guide utility; it can help you narrow your automotive choice by asking a series of questions about your personal needs and wants.

RateltAll Rates Everything

You may pick up some ideas of your own about purchasing a vehicle from hearing or reading about the experiences of others online. Consider, for example, visiting www.rateitall.com, where people regularly sound off about all kinds of products — from graduate schools to their favorite authors. And, of course, you can find plenty of car talk on this Web site.

Click the Cars and Vehicles link on the RateItAll home page. You then see a list of vehicle categories. Click SUV or whatever category of vehicle interests you. You find ratings of up to five stars, along with comments about the vehicles in question. You can sort the comments by gender and age (to determine what the people most like you think) or sort them by rating. You can also add your own comments or even suggest a new topic.

If You Live in Milwaukee (Or Anywhere Else)

You can also find online ratings for dealerships in your local area — candid opinions written by your very own townspeople. If you live in Milwaukee, for example, you can check out the Web site that you find at www.dealerreview.webhostme.com.

This is someone's personal Web site (unsupported by lots of corporate dollars) that the owner maintains in his spare time, but he says that he hopes to expand it to cover all of Wisconsin.

Search the Internet to see whether you can find a local or state site similar to www.dealerreview.webhostme.com in your area, where people can comment on their experiences with dealers in your area.

This Milwaukee site includes dealer history, a rating for each dealership, and comments from readers. You can add your own comments as well, Expect sites such as this one to spring up all around the country, because.., well, it's a really good idea. A dealership-rating site enables you to amplify your word-of-mouth information and recommendations way beyond your immediate circle of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. Remember, however, that personal opinions are highly subjective. But they're also highly candid. Just as you can expect frank talk about a dealership around the office coffee machine, you can also expect it at such locations online.

Trying Consumer Democracy

For a good source of experiences and opinions from others who've tried and tested the vehicle that you're considering, check out the Consumer Democracy Web site (at www.consumerdemocracy.com/cars.htrn).

Here you find all kinds of opinions on various topics relating to cars. (You find information about many other consumer items as well because Consumer Democracy doesn't focus only on cars. You can also find opinions and experiences relating to printers, toys, golf, and much more.) Consumer Democracy provides stats, reviews, acclaim, criticism, ratings, comparisons, warnings, and other kinds of discussions and reports about nearly every type of vehicle that you can want.

To access Consumer Democracy's car reviews, follow these steps:

1. Go to www.consumerdemocracy.com by using your browser's address feature.
2. Click the Cars link on the Consumer Democracy home page (or choose SUV or Truck).
3. Click the Enter Consumer Democracy link. You must agree to a User Agreement to continue.
4. Click the Lagree link to go to the registration form.You see a form where you briefly describe some aspects of yourself.
5. FIll In the form and click the Submit button. You see a welcome page.
6. Click the Click here to make your contribution link. You are asked to provide a review of a product of your choice that you're familiar with-to help others make their buying decisions.
7. Fill In the review form, describing why you like, or don't like, a consumer product. It can be a car, a computer, whatever you have an opinion about.
8. Click the Submit button. You now see a list of reviews of items in the same category in which you just submitted your review. The reviews are listed from best (five stars) to worst (one star). At the bottom of the list you can request to order the list by manufacturer.

TIP
You can always search a list like this one by using the search feature in your browser. For Internet Explorer users, just press Ctrl+F, then fill in the search term you're interested in. To see all 27" televisions, for example, type 27". Click the Find Next button and keep on clicking it to see each match.
9. Click the Go To Consumer Democracy Home Page link at the top of the reviews page. You're now in the main page. On this home page you can select the Popular Products feature, offer more opinions, view others' opinions, or search for a particular item.

10. Click the Browse Categories link. You see a list of broad categories. To view reviews for a Lexus, for example, continue as follows.

11. Click the Transportation link.

12. Click the Automobile and Truck link.

13. Click the Passenger Cars link.

14. Click the View Reviews link. At this point you can locate the car you're interested in by pressing Ctrl+F and searching for the model or make.

Live Chat for Instant Answers

The concept may not be totally PC, but some sites devote their information to women only. Even if you're not a woman, you still may find some information of use to you at the Woman Motorist site (at www.womanmotorist.com on the Web). The site isn't chauvinistic, however — you do find reviews there by both men and women.

This site offers a complete panorama of varied topics, including reviews, maintenance, tips on buying a used car, safety, a glossary, Q&As, new-product features, and, of course, a chat feature. The chat feature also connects to the Talk City site and is open 24 hours a day. Coordinators are online all the time to answer questions. The Auto-General chat room is always open for wide-ranging discussions of topics relating to automobiles, and the Auto-Garage chat room is for specially hosted discussions of all things automotive.

Talk City delivers

Talk City (at www.talkcity.com on the Web), a famous site, offers quite a bit of online activity. You can find chat rooms, famous people leading discussions, polls, photo galleries, and much more at this venerable, active site.

Click the Autos link in the What Interests You? area in the middle of the screen, and you access the Auto interest page.

Click the View a list of Auto chats link. You see a list of the currently active discussions for this category and the number of participants in each.

As you can see in this page, 18 people are talking about classic cars, 6 about autos in general, 13 about motorcycles, and a few others about various other topics. (But what's going on in the Auto-Audio room, where only one person is talking?)

If you choose to enter a chat, click the appropriate link.

Registered members get some nice "prizes" at the Talk City site: free e-mail and a free home page. You can still chat, however, even if you don't want to register at this time. Choose a user name, and you see a message asking whether you want to download the Talk City chat software. Agree. The download only takes a few seconds, and you then find yourself right there in the chat.

Another interesting feature of the Talk City chats is that you can create a chat room (topic) of your own. Just click the Create A Room button in the lower-right corner of the chat page, and you're off and running. You can then sit around in your new chat room and hope that others join you in your new discussion topic.

Locating other popular chat centers

Many competing chat centers and message boards reside out there in cyberspace. You can give any of them a try to see whether any particular one is currently a hotbed of car talk. The following list offers a brief rundown of some of the most highly rated gab sites on the Web:

- www.rernarq.com includes an active auto message board.

-www.powwow.com offers both chat and instant messaging (including voice messages).

- www.topica.com focuses on e-mail lists of people with various special interests, including — you guessed it — vehicles. As TopicA puts it, "TopicA's service helps you easily find people, discussions, and information on virtually any topic."

- www.askme.com boasts more than a million visitors a month who pose — and answer — nearly every question under the sun. You can also browse through its archives of more than 125,000 past questions and answers.

AOL, the popular choice

You can find one of the biggest and oldest chat centers around within America Online. You find a lot of chatting going on there. And, just as you can at Talk City, you can start your own chat room to discuss the topic of your choice (such as a room that you design specifically for Honda owners) to solicit opinions on that particular make of vehicle you're eyeing.

And while you're on AOL, don't forget to visit its Auto Center. Click the Keyword button (at the top right of the main AOL screen), type Auto in the Keyword dialog box that appears, and then click the Go button.

Understanding Lifestyle Factors

How you live, what you enjoy, who you are in your own eyes — these factors can prove significant in choosing something as important (and with as many variables) as your personal automobile.

To increase your odds of forging a happy marriage between your personality and the car that you buy, I suggest the following course: After you ask others in chat rooms how they feel about their cars, ask yourself some questions. Your answers can help you assess the views that others express and, therefore, determine whether what others like about a car corresponds to your own values in a vehicle. To help you in asking the right questions, I recommend that you try the AOL Decision Guide.

Click the Decision Guide link on the AOL Auto Center screen. A profiling feature then appears to help you decide what car is best for your lifestyle and personality type.

A list of lifestyle types appears at the bottom of the Decision Guide screen: Commuter, College Freshman, Executive, Soccer Mom, Sport Driver, Weekend Warrior, and Jealous Nerd. Well, Jealous Nerd doesn't really appear in the list, so if that description fits you, you can't just click one of those predefined lifestyle types to see the car that fits your type. If, however, you're a soccer mom, you can go ahead and click that link. (If you do click the Soccer Mom — or any other of these preset options — and then decide to set up your own custom profile instead, you can click the Return to Start button to get back to the beginning of the profiling feature.)

To fill in your personal profile, follow these steps:

1. From the Decision Guide start page, click the Q&A button. The process of creating your custom lifestyle profile begins with the Car Type page.
2. Select the check boxes describing the model year and car type that interest you.
3. Click the next button (at the top-right corner of the screen). The Price page appears.
4. Move the money slider in the middle of the screen by clicking and dragging it with the mouse until it indicates the maximum amount of money you're willing to pay and then click the Next button. You now go to the Size page.
5. Define the size options that matter to you and then click Next. You now see the Features page, where you can decide which options are essential, desirable, or relatively unimportant to you.
6. Select the appropriate radio buttons for each feature and then click the Next button. You're now at the Safety/Ratings page.
7. Select the appropriate radio buttons for how much each safety feature matters to you and then click Next. The Technical page appears.
8. Indicate any specific technical requirements that you have by clicking the check boxes for those features you require and then click Next. Must you have four-wheel drive? An automatic transmission? Click the check boxes wherever something in the list is essential to you. If a feature doesn't matter to you, leave its check box clear. If you need additional information, click the blue links (Engine Type, Transmission, Drive Train, and Brakes) for definitions of these technical features. You next access the Manufacturer page.
9. Click radio buttons on the Manufacturer page to indicate how much you favor (or to eliminate from consideration) the various auto makes and then click Next. The Overall Opinion page appears.
10. Click the appropriate radio buttons to spell out how much weight you give to each of the major categories on this page and then click Next. You now see a list of cars that match your criteria. Vehicles that survive your paring-down process appear on the Decision Guide's Results page in order of how well they match your needs and wants. In my case, I have 139 cars left after my own exercise with the AOL Decision Guide. Two BMWs match my lifestyle 100 percent. (The 139th car on the list, however, gets a compatibility score of only 64 percent.)