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| HOME | US | HELP ME CHOOSE |

US Help Me Choose

Still have no idea which car is best for you? Try these resources....

CarSmart.com Price/Feature Search
http://www.carsmart.com/content/research/PriceFeature/index.cfm

This tool that at first appears very similar to the AutoSite tool actually offers more functionality but drops the ball badly at the end.

Pros:
You indicate basic criteria in a couple of easy to use pages and then get to indicate using radio buttons which characteristics are most important to you (reliability, performance, mileage, price). You can compare vehicles to each other on the final screen. Details on individual cars that meet your criteria are good with consumer reviews, the ability to estimate payments, invoice and list price and much more.

Cons:
The final page display which shows cars that have met your criteria is a real disappointment. It only shows the first car on the list and you have no idea why that vehicle is listed first since you can't see things like price or fuel economy for the other vehicles. You also can't re-sort the list. This is such a shame since this could be so much better.

AutoSite - Advanced Search
http://www.autosite.com/content/Research/Decision/index.cfm

A fair 'help me choose' tool that should allow you to build a short-list of vehicles that fit your criteria. This review (October 2008) finds the whole site with a much more car selling slant as opposed to earlier when the emphasis was much more on research - this is unfortunate.

Pros:
The process is quick and easy - simply answer as many or as few questions as you feel like (but at least one obviously!) on this page and then click on the CONTINUE button to show a list of cars that meet your criteria.

Cons:
There are, in my opinion, some very important questions that aren't on the page. For example, fuel economy, fuel type (hybrid, diesel) and safety rating. Certainly in earlier reviews the ability to select hybrids was available in the help me choose tool.

I am not crazy about the way the list of cars that meet your criteria is formatted - it is cumbersome and hard to scan quickly. A list would be better and a list that could be re-sorted would be ideal.

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