What is it that makes reviews such a wonderful source of information when researching a new car? The reason is simple. A review is typically given by someone who knows first-hand specifics about the vehicle in question. The trick, though, is not necessarily in finding reviews, since they can be found literally anywhere. What is difficult is finding accurate information from a source that can be trusted.
“I don’t know which car has more horsepower?”
Typically, people do not want to make a high-dollar purchase without having some type of information that they can count on. The next time you are in the market for a new car or truck, take a look at one of these sources, and you can be certain to have a location for reviews that you can trust.
- Magazines: One of the most trusted and popular sources of information that a driver has at their disposal is that of magazines. Such publications have for years based their entire professional reputations on providing accurate information. Magazines such as Car and Driver and Motor Trend have become well known for providing accurate information on multiple levels, for both the professional and amateur level of knowledge.
- Internet: Going online is one of the best ways that anyone can use to gather information and reviews about the various vehicles that a person can buy. Visit as many different places, but places that are trustworthy, to gather information that is going to help you in your decisions, there are some things that need to be kept in mind when doing this. You are going to want to limit your searches to sources that have some type of a professional stake in their recommendation, basically places that are staking their professional reputations.
- Mechanics: I have found that one of the greatest sources for reviews that I can trust is a mechanic. A mechanic is used to delivering professional grade information (since they are a professional) on an amateur’s level. I would strongly suggest that you take advantage of your local mechanic. Typically, the best way to ask a mechanic what they think is just saying something like, “What would you choose?”
- Government: While I know that it is pretty hard to trust anything that comes from the government these days, there are a couple of governmental sources that I would strongly suggest that you go along with. One is the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Both of these sources sole job is to help maintain safe roadways, so therefore can be trusted to provide fairly accurate information.
Now certainly this isn’t an exhausted list by any means. Checking blogs like this one, forums, consumer oriented publications and other forms of media is just going to make the decision making process that much easier. Here’s a hint: Pay as much attention to the negative reviews as you do the good ones. If you have any questions or comments, you know where to find me.