The pros and cons of buying a car online

Looking for a car online greatly extends your reach in searching for the model of your dreams. — Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Last year, for the first time, people spent more money buying classic and collectible cars online than they did in person.

Car-buying website Bring a Trailer sold US$829mil (RM3.5bil) worth of vehicles in 2021, soundly beating the highest live auction sales totals by a quarter-billion dollars. The sum confirmed a trend that has been building over the past few years. Such online car-buying platforms as Bonhams’ Market, Collecting Cars, Hemmings, Shiftgate, and Cazoo have boosted the shift in consumer behaviour that BAT instigated. Before the novel coronavirus struck, only die-hard car bros were buying used and collectible cars online; now it is the default mode for enthusiasts and newbies looking to buy a dream car.

Buying a car online isn’t for the faint of heart. It means you’ll spend a chunk of change on something you (probably) haven’t even seen in real life, let alone driven. And as professional car brokers take advantage of the boom in car auction websites, sellers are no longer just suburbanites wondering how much they could get for their Audi wagons or hairdressers trying to sell their Miatas. For lay participants, buying a car online can feel like jumping off a cliff into a sea of sharks.

What’s more, no matter how pristine and well-photographed the cars are, they are still used. This implies no factory guarantee, no warranty, and plenty of mechanical and structural unknowns. Ultimately, as one longtime collector tells me, buying a used car online is like buying a used car from anywhere else: "You’ve got to expect the worst and hope for the best.”

To know if it’s right for you, it pays to go in with a healthy perspective on the format.

Pros of buying a car online

You can get advice from the peanut gallery

Listing a classic vehicle for sale online means that everyone sees it-and feels entitled to grace the rest of us with their intimate knowledge of said model. I’m constantly surprised and impressed by how obscure a detail car people will get into over a BMW M3, a Porsche 356, or a C3 Corvette.

They’ll talk about whether, say, the fourth generation of the model was great... or known to produce lemons. They’ll dissect whether the special packages and factory options are relevant to its value or not. If someone knows the car was in an accident, or it has the incorrect (non-factory) door handles, headlights, or wheels for a model of that vintage, they will announce it to the world.

All the airing of dirty laundry is to your benefit as a buyer. The cream, as the saying goes, rises to the top. It becomes clear pretty quickly just how sound a given car is-or how decrepit.

Buying Tip No. 1 - Read diligently through the comments on any vehicle you’re considering buying. They’ll bring up a lot of good points about the car and give you a chance to have questions answered, or even to post a comment asking one.

Your search radius is much larger

Looking for a car online greatly extends your reach in searching for the model of your dreams. Where local newspaper ads and your buddies down at the bar will have some regional knowledge of what is for sale – which will be limited – the Internet sees all.

If you’re looking for something specific-a certain colour, a low-volume model year, or, say, a left-hand-drive version of a 930 Turbo-and you don’t live in a major urban centre, it’s unlikely there will be one in your community. That’s where the online scope proves its worth.

Buying Tip No. 2 - Don’t worry if a car you like is a few states over. Unless you’re talking about million-dollar vehicles an ocean away, putting a car on a transport truck to move it will typically cost a few thousand dollars. That’s inexpensive relative to the cost of the car and worth it to get the one you want.

You can automate your search

Online platforms like Market and Bring a Trailer send email and/or app alerts when a specific kind of car you want goes on sale. They’ll also highlight certain models in their newsletters and daily highlights. This means you will automatically get notice if anything remotely close to the specific car you want hits the market, not to mention and few cars you never knew you wanted but now absolutely must have.

Buying Tip No. 3 - Investigate what alert tools sites offer. If you register as a BAT user, for instance, you can opt to get updates, even on specific auctions happening in real time, to help you keep tabs as new bids are placed and the auction clock ticks down.

It’s really easy!

It can be as simple as punching in the numbers to your credit card and clicking check out. As many car enthusiasts and their long-suffering partners will attest, it’s almost... too easy.

Buying Tip No. 4 - Car-buying may be an emotional decision, but don’t let excitement (or fear) cloud your better judgment. The wrong used car, no matter how cool it looks or how long you’ve been looking for it, will turn into a black hole that sucks all the fun out of ownership-and potentially, money from your wallet. Take the time to do your research and gain an understanding of how the market looks before you even think about engaging your credit card.

Cons of buying a car online

You can’t easily test the ergonomics

If you have ever bought a sofa or a bed via the Internet without physically trying it-and paid the price with a sore back-you know how important it can be to test a big purchase. That goes doubly for those of us on the edges of the physical spectrum: the extremely tall, short, narrow, or broad. You can’t know how a car suits and fits you until you sit in it.

The goal is to drive this thing-right? So consider the following. Does the angle of the windshield make you duck and bend your neck to see stoplights? Do the seats sit so low that you’re reaching to see over the hood of the car? Do the rear pillars block so much of your view that you feel unsafe in the driver’s seat? Can you reach the pedals without straining? Such considerations will make the difference between loving a vehicle and not wanting to spend another second in it.

Buying Tip No. 5 - If the price of the car is considerable to you, get on a plane and visit. The owner will be happy to let a thorough, serious prospective buyer poke around the vehicle before pulling the trigger to pay online. If the owner is reluctant, consider it a red flag.

Buying Tip No. 6 - If you have your eye on a car online and can’t get to it yourself, go to a used-car lot and sit in a similar model. This will at least give you an idea of such things as the model’s general seat height, visibility, steering wheel placement, and so forth. (That said, each car is different. Seats age and settle differently, for example, and some cars contain after-market racing seats that radically differ from factory options.)

Your purchase is part of the public record

As discussed above, having a wide audience of onlookers vicariously participating in your prospective purchase is a big positive in some ways. But that publicity can also work against you. Big sales for high prices tend to get attention online. BAT frequently sets new bars for the price people are willing to pay for cars, including a Ferrari 308 Dino that recently sold for US$140,000 (RM592,830) and a Porsche Carrera GT that sold for US$1.9mil (RM8mil). Both sold well above standard market value. And once new benchmarks are set, prices can increase across the whole segment.

Buying Tip No.7 - If private sales aren’t an option, keep your ego and emotions in check so you don’t overpay-and therefore boost the hype and attention around a certain make. Paying a little above estimated and market values is one thing; paying a lot more is something else. Even if well-tuned auto insiders consider a rash bid an aberration, every benchmark can affect the marketplace.

All those photos are just that: photos

Online sites may have hundreds of photos or videos showing every nook of a car’s engine bay, interior, exterior, undercarriage, axles, and more. But nothing beats the ability to have a trusted expert minutely inspect and aggressively drive a vehicle to test its viability. Remember: The very name Bring a Trailer implies that the car being sold may not run, so the buyer will need to "bring a trailer” to take it home.

Buying Tip No. 8 - If the car potentially means a lot to you and you can’t physically eyeball it, splurge on retaining a mechanic to inspect it. And recite again and again: This is just a used car. There are lots of things about it that could go terribly wrong! Buyer beware. – Bloomberg