The Essential Guide to Buying and Selling
a Car in Canada
Pape and Wise know a lot about how to wheel and deal, being
former car salesmen, but it's clear that they neither love nor know a
lot about the vehicles themselves.
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The Essential Guide to Buying and Selling a Car in Canada
Kendrew Pape and Mel Wise
Scarborough: Prentice Hall Canada 1998
137 pages; $9.95
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I was initially offended by a lot of the advice that Kendrew Pape
and Mel Wise gave me as I thumbed through their new book; a lot of
the pointers in The Essential Guide to Buying and Selling a Car in
Canada are "duh" bits, like don't ever fall in love; keep rational.
Then I remembered my family's last few expeditions to car
dealerships, and the chaos the negotiations inevitably fell into, and
realized that a lot of this information desperately needed writing
down.
Pape and Wise, both of whom have actually been car salesmen, are
well suited to the job of guiding us through the process of buying a
new or used car. They know about how to deal with sales managers;
about secret warranties; about how dealers buy, mark up, and sell
cars. Perhaps best of all, they're able to communicate much of this
information to us in clear, easy-to-understand language that's free
of the jargon that bills-of-sale and other contracts are full of.
Most of the car-buying steps are broken down into digestible steps,
with the added bonus of tear-out checklists at the end of each
chapter.
Much of The Essential Guide to Buying and Selling a Car in
Canada's best advice is in the test-driving chapter, where the
authors not only tell you that a test drive is a good thing (a
surprising number of people refuse to test-drive cars they're
intending to buy, they say, evidently because they're afraid of
forming an emotional commitment,) but what exactly to do&emdash;how
to test the brakes; problems to look for in new and used cars.
Best of all, we're presented with an actual bill of sale near the
end of the book, and it's explained in simple terms, line-by-line,
with advice on how to add and remove clauses, and what you can do in
case something's wrong with the car on delivery.
Simplicity, though, is also this book's problem. Car buying is
such a huge undertaking that it really deserves a lot more coverage
than any 137-page book can ever hope to provide. Car choices, for
example, are whittled down to pithy one- or two-paragraph
descriptions that are, more often than not, filled with car-salesman
speak rather than with useful factual information.
For instance, when describing mid-sized pickup trucks, they speak
of ruggedness, dependability, and indestructibility&emdash;and that
they come with "powerful suspensions." What, exactly, is a "powerful
suspension," and why do full-sized trucks have "solid" ones instead?
(Most pickups&emdash;of any size&emdash;use solid axles at the rear.)
A quick count of the number of station-wagon models on sale today
compared to ten years ago would tell you that they are not competing
"quite well" against minivans and sport-utilities.
Still, at $9.95, The Essential Guide to Buying and Selling a Car
in Canada is a bona fide bargain; properly used, its advice, even the
simple stuff about keeping your cool and bringing along a negotiating
sidekick, has the potential to save you thousands. Its strengths in
the financial and legal details are many, and it's hard to fault the
authors for glossing over the hundreds of car models on
sale&emdash;besides, they provide a handy list of resources at the
end of the book for tracking down your perfect car. After you've
chosen the vehicle you want, Pape and Wise's book will pay for itself
many times over.