Here comes the salesman - cue Jaws soundtrack...

Buying a new car shouldn’t require a prescription for Xanax. If you spend the time to figure out exactly what you’re looking for and what you’re willing to pay for it, then it’s just a matter of finding a dealer who’ll work with you. Sure, I’ve encountered my share of amoral scumbag car dealers over the years, but the vast majority of businesses I’ve dealt with have been courteous and helpful. Here are a few tips to ease the pain of your next new car buying experience:

So you’re not the type to buy or lease a new vehicle, and even “Certified Pre-Owned” cars are more coin than you’re willing to part with. So, Mr. Cash-and-carry, how can you avoid getting ripped off when buying a used car? There are no absolutes, and even well respected manufacturers build lemons from time to time, but here are my top ten pointers for buying a good used car at a fair price:

1) Know EXACTLY what you want. Don’t shop for a “sporty car” or a “sedan” or a “pickup truck”. Shop for a 2000 to 2005 Mazda Miata, or a 2001 – 2003 VW Passat or a 1997 – 2000 Ford F150. If you stay focused, you are less likely to be lured into buying a car you have NOT done research on just because it appears to be cleaner or in better shape. Focus, people!

The words “affordable” and “Italian” generally don’t play well in the same sandbox. Italian sports cars as a whole bring up thoughts of big dollars, big repair bills and big ego’s, that is, until now. I recently had the opportunity to view one of these rare Italian beasties in person and was pleasantly surprised by what I found out, that being, that most anyone whose employed can own one.

What you see here is a 1960 Alfa Romeo 2000 and it is a beauty. Think of it as the Mazda Miata’s illegitimate great grandfather. These cars, although rare are actually quite affordable with the price spectrum ranging from about 20k-40k which really isn’t that bad when you consider this car was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro… never heard of him? Well, he’s the guy who also designed the Ferrari 250 Berlinetta Bertone, De Tomaso Mangusta, Iso Grifo and Maserati Ghibli, so in short… he’s got mad skills.

Performance wise the little Alfa is no pavement shredder. It’s little four cylinder cast iron mill churns out about 105 HP @ 5300 RPM and sounds glorious, not to bad for a car that weighs less than 2300 lbs. Although, if you want to get really crazy the later 2600 models did have an 2.3L inline-6 that produced 145 HP… BOOYA!! Make no mistake, these little Alfa’s are all Italian, all sports car and everything you’d need to fit in to any car show anywhere in the world. So before you go out and spend that 30k on some new pasta rocket or strudel wagon, take a look around and think outside the box, because if you do, you may just be amazed at what you’ll find.

Confirming the suspicions harbored by many automotive journalists that the vast majority of the car-buying public has zero interest in vehicles that are actually fun to drive, the Toyota Camry has earned the top spot as the best selling car of December 2009. As if that fact itself were not discouraging enough to end the year on, the even less impressive Toyota Corolla managed to snag the Number 2 spot, followed closely by the Honda Accord (3rd), Honda Civic (4th), and finally, the Chevy Malibu (5th). The singular reason for this, at least by our good friend Timothy Cain’s analysis, appears to be that many consumers value basic functions over frivolous things such as “performance” and “aesthetics.” This would explain the quasi-success of the PT Cruiser.

In stark contrast to the European money pits traditionally featured, today’s FOTD is a 1991 GMC Syclone. Despite the fact that it’s probably older than your first born child and manufactured by a company not exactly renowned for its longevity (which I expect will be directly refuted by a barrage of GM forum trolls), both the Syclone and the Typhoon have left such an indelible legacy that they are granted a reprieve from my domestic scorn.

As a matter of fact, so enamored am I with arguably one of the best examples of superior engineering to ever leave Michigan, I’m even willing to overlook the ominously rebuilt title. According to the seller (and confirmed by Carfax), the truck was stolen in 2001 and recovered with damage severe enough to warrant a “salvage” branding, which still only resulted in a $2k price decrease. The slightly blurry photos paint a promising picture, though, and as long as you’re adept at maintaining a vehicle constructed almost entirely out of Bondo, this is definitely a piece worth investing in.

If you’re like most consumers in the market for a used car, your needs are probably best served by eBay, AutoTrader, or your local Craigslist. If you are like 99% of automotive enthusiasts, however, your pursuit for that perfect diamond in the rough exists in perpetuity. You can easily squander 5+ hours at work tirelessly refreshing your browser in the vain hope that the pristine Volvo 850R you’ve spent the better part of your adult life pursuing will magically appear for thousands less than its Blue Book value. If such is the case, then the chances are good that you’ve also experienced significant frustration at the hands of Craigslist’s rather limiting search parameters. Although you probably could if you neglected your job, family, and personal hygiene for days on end, it’s realistically impossible to search every Craigslist in every state in every city in the continental U.S. (though you’ve certainly tried). Fortunately, I’ve found a way: searchtempest.com. Not only will SearchTempest.com allow you to expand your search radius to include any location within your current zip code, it also throws in all the relevant eBay listings as a bonus.

Inspired by my current quest for a sub-$5,000 daily driver, I’ve decided to publish a companion piece to the generalized buyer’s tips I outlined months ago specifically geared towards purchasing from Craigslist. Unlike other digital automotive marketplaces (Vehix, AutoTrader, etc) Craigslist provides the unique opportunity to find both rare treasures and immensely entertaining, often poorly executed scams. As a matter of fact, so prevalent is the latter it would likely be prudent to offer a few tips to avoid losing your shirt to the crown prince of Nigeria, but if the giant banner at the top of the auto classifieds proclaiming “OFFERS TO SHIP CARS ARE 100% FRAUDULENT” doesn’t serve as enough of a warning, you should probably be sterilized. So, moving on.

The first and most solid piece of advice I can offer is this: lower your standards. If you’re shopping for a used car with the same kind of operating budget that I am then your search is going to be not entirely unlike that of the skeezy guy/fat chick’s at the single’s bar. Your options are going to be limited, so you can’t afford to be too picky. At this stage in the game (10+ years old, 100k-ish miles), barring any miraculous discovery of a Granny-driven, garage-kept Benz, the cars that you’ll be looking at will have seen much better days. The “Service” indicator will probably be stuck on because the local garage didn’t have the right code reader needed to turn it off, there’ll be a couple dings from lost battles in cramped parking garages, and the leather might be ripped from where the K-9 unit started smelled the coke. What you need to determine is which defects you’re willing to let slide and which ones will be a deal breaker. For example, I need: air conditioning, a tape deck, no leaks, and rear windows that roll all the way down. I can live with: blood stains, minor dents, and awful aftermarket rims. I can also live with a wealthy beneficiary whose willing to buy me a decommissioned military-spec Gelandewagen and/or a Land Rover Defender…but I digress.

My second piece of advice is equally as simplistic as the first: get a clue. Kbb.com and Edmunds.com offer excellent used car appraisal services – use them. I’ve found that often times owners will demonstrate a particular soft spot for their aging piece of crap by pricing it for thousands more than it’s worth, so it pays to be aware of exactly how delusional a seller may or may not be. With the ‘93 Volvo 240 I discussed below, the seller wanted literally double what the vehicle was worth – though to be fair that wasn’t so much an example of die-hard loyalty as it was a blatant rip-off. At any rate, the likelihood that you’ll run into a comically priced vehicle on Craigslist is actually much higher than if you’d gone the dealership route since most of these guys have a personal attachment to their rides. Keep this in mind when you march in to meet them with your KBB print out in hand and try not to piss all over their hard work. Gently yet firmly explain to them how much the vehicle is worth, how much you’re willing to pay, and if all else fails offer to perform sexual favors. I jest, of course. You should offer the favors up front.

Thanks to the ingenious social marketing wizards employed by Mercedes-Benz Financial, you can now make the $500 payment on your leased GL500 while your date is freshening up in the girls’ room. Or, more likely, you can make the $500 payment from the floor of your broskie SoCal condo while you’re face down in the Berber carpet nursing a serious hangover. Either way, Mercedes-Benz Financial has made it easy and – dare we say – cool to fork over your scratch every month.

Since the new application’s official launch last week, Mercedes-Benz reports they’re already averaging 80-100 downloads a day, essentially confirming our previously held belief that the only people wealthy enough to afford an iPhone and its related service plan are either a.) in the upper tax bracket or b.) living off the fruits of Daddy’s labor. If you personally fall into one of the above mentioned catagories and have financed a Benz through Merc’s in-house financing arm, check out the site for yourself at Mercedes-BenzFinancial.com/iPhone.

More grist for the mill in the ongoing debate about the aftereffects of Cash for Clunkers and the current recession: Kelley Blue Book reports that small car sales unexpectedly rose in September, after tumbling precipitously when gas prices stabilized. This is despite the fact that the Cash for Clunkers program ended on August 24th, and that overall sales of new cars have been down after the program. This also contradicts a recent survey among new car buyers that suggested that large numbers of the C4C buyers who purchased small cars were unsatisfied with their purchase and would buy a larger car next time.

In perhaps one of the strangest pieces of news to come across our desks this week, DeLorean Motor Company is purportedly seriously interested in rescuing the ill-fated Pontiac Solstice from the scrap heap. The announcement comes on the heels of news that Saturn – and with it the Solstice’s only remaining relative, the Saturn Skyy – would be killed off after GM’s distribution deal with Penske fell through. Discontent to watch what was inarguably one of the most enjoyable cars an American company had to offer slip into obscurity, DMC announced their bid to save the Solstice.