New And Used Cars For Sale

Q.I need get a new comuter car. I want something small, zippy, relatively quiet, that will accommodate my basset hounds (at least 2 or 3 of them). I'm looking at a Golf GTI at a local dealer (Seattle area). The car looks clean, has no record of major disasters on carfax.com, and as far as I can tell the asking price is about mid-range. I have a couple of questions. My (simple) understanding is that the major difference between a Golf and a GTI is the 16 valve engine. Is this right? Is it worth the price difference? Does the GTI have other features that make it a more attractive car than other Golf models? With 61,000 miles, am I looking at major (expensive) maintenance like a timing belt in the near future? I had a 77 Rabbit that had leaky valve stem seals, resulting in a warped head. I understand that Golfs have had similar problems but that in more recent years the cars are more trouble free. Is this true and is 96 new enough that I can expect to be free of major design/manufacturing problems. I've been searching the web for sites where I could read up on the GTI but haven't found any. Any suggestions?

A.Bear in mind that prices in Seattle area are biased from all the new money in town, mainly from the good folks at Microsoft (and the startups that have sprung up from ex-Microsoft employees). From what I hear from that area, the area is flush with money. Lots of money. Lots of new money. As housing prices have been driven up by the influx of money, so will other items, and new and used car prices have to be affected as well. One way to find out what a used car is worth is to check with a bank to see how much money it will loan one on the car. At best, a bank will only loan 80% of the wholesale value so this gives you at least another opinion on what the car is worth. Of course, the problem is that you could be asking the same bank that threw billions away in South America and has no clue as to what a used car is worth. Another way is to look for similar cars for sale by private buyers and call them up *after* the car has sold and by guile try to learn what they actually got for the car. It is one thing to ask X$ for a car, another thing to get X$. Usually the seller will take less, sometimes substantially less either because they are desparate to sell or don't have a good understanding of the car's value, or didn't take the time to prep the car to get a higher price. Two cars, identical in mechanical condition, but one dirty, in need of a wash, wax, and some cabin cleaning, will fetch less than a car that has been gone over and cleaned and waxed. (Also a factor: Cash. Show up with cash and make a counter offer and provided the offer isn't ridiculously low, it takes a real tough person to resist the money. A bird in the hand and all that...) Anyhow, a clean car usually sells faster and for a higher price. It is human nature... Cars depreciate at a pretty fixed rate. A new car, once driven off the lot drops in value to the dealer's cost (which may or may not be and in fact probably is not the 'invoice' price the dealer quoted you) minus 10%. (Rough rule of thumb is that for import cars in the compact/sub-compact group, figure the dealer's cost is 88 to 90 percent of the MSRP not including flooring cost which can run (for a $20,000 car) approx. $150 per month the car's been on teh dealer's floor (showroom, lot).) So a car MSRP'd at $20,000 cost the dealer say $17,600 ($20,000 times .88) (and maybe less if the factory kicked in some additional incentives because the model is not selling too well, or because the dealer's been a real go getter and sold a lot of cars) and drops in value the minute is driven off the lot by its new owner by another $1760 and therefore becomes worth only $15840. Every year after it drops in value to approx. 88% its current depreciated value. That is, the second year, the value drops by $15840 * .88 or $13,939 and so on...

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