Archive for the ‘Shoppers’ Category

It's no secret or surprise that men and women shop for vehicles in very different ways. A number of studies from market-research firms have shown that while women place the most emphasis on practical attributes when shopping for a vehicle, men tend more often to gravitate to vehicles because of their image.

A new survey done for the retail giant CarMax, looking into the reason for purchasing a car in the first place, suggests that women are highly motivated by life events.

The survey found that for 60 percent of women a career change (getting a new job or retirement) would be the most likely reason for purchasing a car. And for younger...

A Southern California couple who decided to trade in their 2001 Nissan Xterra under the Cash for Clunkers program in August later found the vehicle for sale in the same dealership's used lot.

Oops. It seems that the dealership, Volkswagen of Garden Grove, decided to forget about the CARS claim on the Xterra and tried to sell it themselves.

The environmentally minded couple says that they wouldn’t have traded the Xterra in the first place if they’d known it wasn’t going to be scrapped. They had intended to purchase a Jetta TDI and get the $4,500 CARS credit, but instead the dealership didn’t have any and they settled for a gasoline Jetta,...

Although cars remain at near record levels of affordability, new-car buyers turned to more expensive vehicles this past quarter.

That's according to Comerica Bank's latest Auto Affordability Index, which looks at the number of weeks of family income needed to buy a new car. Overall in the second quarter of 2009, the average-priced new car took 22.1 weeks of median family income—versus 21.8 weeks in the first quarter—largely because the bank's tally of the average new light-vehicle price rose to $26,300, up from $26,000.

That might be taken as a sign of recovery, but it's most likely the result of more easily available financing, relative to...