Four Wheels...and Shiny: My quest for a new car is complete. After a good long time of pointless fantasizing about all sorts of high status models; an interminable wait for my refinancing to come through; and a brief, but serious, flirtation with the possibility of a Honda Accord, I have purchased a Toyota Camry. It had 4 miles on it. The one I traded in had 199,000. It looks like this.

First, I should note the reasons I didn't get an Accord. Partly, the reason is that I went into the local dealer, Howard Cooper, and showed them the price I could buy the car off the web. The salesman tried to tell me that wasn't the actual price when in fact it was. He tried to tell me it didn't include this charge or that charge, when it clearly did. Even after I explained to him that there was no advantage for me to buy from him and that I was only there to give them a shot because they were conveniently located, he basically just shrugged it off. And offered me a price of 600-700 over the web purchase price. He was very polite, not pushy at all, but he just didn't seem to grasp the reality of the situation.

But mostly, the reason I decided against an Accord was that it was not that much of a revelation to drive. Mind you, I was stepping into this car from a 1993 model Camry with nearly 200k miles on it. I should have been blown away by it. But I wasn't. It was much quieter, but that was because there were no rattles. The V-6 was strong off the line, but there was a trivial, but discernible hesitation to it. Mostly the problem was the ride. It just didn't ride all that smoothly. Now I'm sure any reader of Car and Driver magazine will point out that the trade-off for a smooth ride is something called road feel. Road feel theoretically gives you a better sense of the road beneath you and thereby giving you better control. Sorry, but no one who has driven the streets in southeastern Michigan is going to think positively about road feel. Round these parts, enough road feel will rattle your fillings loose.

So I ended up back where I started: on the hunt for a Camry. I went back to the web - specifically CarsDirect.com and printed out specs and prices in the hopes that my local Toyota dealer would have more respect for the web price. It didn't matter. Upon perusing their stock, I realized they had two types of Camrys, loaded ones pushing 30 grand, and 20 grand-ish basic models. Like the Baby Bear, I was looking for something "juuuust right".

Ok, enough is enough. Instead of just using them for price quotes, I decided to start the purchase process through CarsDirect.com. It worked out well.

CarsDirect (and presumably other similar services) really provides two things to the buyer: 1) A set price. It appears to be around $600 over invoice. This includes everything but sales tax and will take into account any cash back deals. No haggling. And 2) they search for the car you spec. They may not find it exactly, but they'll get as close as they can. That's an enormous time saver. You could spend who knows how long calling and visiting dealers around you. Each car they offer you will be given the same fixed price treatment.

This entire process takes very little time. In my case about four days. I exchanged phone calls and emails with a CarsDirect rep. He couldn't find the car I spec'd, or anything close. Not surprising, I picked out an odd combination of model and options - cars companies often make sets of options technically available, but never or rarely produce cars with those combinations. So I sent an email giving a couple of other model/option combos, suggesting which options were most important to me and which ones I was simply unwilling to pay for, along with a short list of colors in order of preference. The next day he called back with two possibilities. One was marginally close to what I was looking for, the other was almost exactly what I wanted, right down to my first color choice.

There was only one small inconvenience. It was at a dealership 50 miles away. So I resigned myself to a full day of dealing with completing the sale. The trip out to the dealer. Sitting around waiting for the salesman to finish his coffee, complete paperwork. The haggling about my trade-in, which if it fell through would kill the deal and I'd be staring at 200k on the odometer all the way home. I steeled myself to walk-away at the slightest sign of a problem, because I know from my very brief time as a car salesman that is the ONLY WAY you won't get taken by these people.

Once I got to the dealer it took all of a half-hour to finish everything. Salesman had cleared his schedule for my arrival. Take the car for a quick spin. I wanted as least as much for my trade-in as the tax benefit I would have gotten for donating it - no problem. Price was exactly as quoted - no haggling. Paperwork was handled almost immediately. I had even forgotten the title to my old car and they said, that's OK, mail it in when you get back. Wow.

So I have my super smooth new Camry. And it was about as painless as possible. Kudos to Rinke Toyota for having so much on the ball, and a very strong recommendation for CarsDirect.com.

The sleazy car salesman can now go the way of the dinosaur, the 8-track, and the stock broker. Good riddance. You can put buying a car on the short list of activities that have been improved by technology.