CarsDirect

Full review
Based on my recent car buying experience, I can’t quite recommend Carsdirect, although they can be useful.

Let me explain. I first priced a Subaru Forrester 2006 with Carsdirect.com, and got what looked like a good price (similar to Edmunds.com True Market Value price). But I’m glad I did not go ahead and started the purchase process with Carsdirect. Not only you can get a better deal (by $300-$500 in the case of the Forrester) by requesting quotes from the dealerships via kbb.com, Edmunds.com, cars.com, etc, but I also ended up considering another vehicle that I eventually bought.

When you shop yourself, you get the advantage of dealing with dealer’s internet/fleet managers directly (who were quite nice), and I was more comfortable doing this rather than “buying a cat in a bag.” I preferred dealing with a person at a dealership that has “my” future car, I know where the dealership is, and you still need to show up there to do a test drive. That’s the one thing you cannot do online.

In any case, I ended up buying a different car (Toyota RAV4) and Carsdirect.com price was MSRP! I understand that this is an in-demand vehicle, but by requesting quotes online at the sites above, I got it $1500 under MSRP. Only one online quote was MSRP – was that the dealership that Carsdirect was dealing with? Most other quotes (and I got about 10) were $700 - $1200 below MSRP. So you can do much better by doing your own shopping, and it’s more fun, too.

In the end, I’d use Carsdirect as a tool to determine the *maximum* you should pay, and then doing your own shopping.