Free Online Car Quotes

Getting online information about cars has never been easier. Hundreds of automotive sites offer 24 hour information covering any aspect of vehicle ownership. Internet researchers can find opinions, prices, specifications, costs, colors, history, and quotes for virtually any automobile ever made.

We crave online quotes because it's simply too stressful and time consuming to trudge from dealer to dealer. Razor sharp salespeople lurk at every turn: obtaining an honest quote becomes tedious and hazardous. Knowing that simply getting an honest price from a car dealer requires hours of haggling often drives well-meaning shoppers to online sources.

Most online sources are honest, but even the Internet harbors some duplicity. An online quote, even if it's slightly skewed, is worth more than an afternoon spent dueling with a salesperson and his phantom manager.

"The 1982 Mustang has all the personality of a moldy horse blanket dusted in motor oil and buried under a New Orleans front porch in August."

"Sure, people love their Porsches, but they love the payments on their Geo Prizm even more. It all evens out."

"I had a Covrair and it was unsafe at any speed except 0, which is how fast it went as it sat for 40 years in the garage, until I sold it for 50 times what I paid for it."

"Car insurance is a serious bet with a big company: you're betting you'll have a wreck and they're betting you won't. Even if you win, you lose."

Driving is fun, shopping for cars is fun, but sharing the emotional highs and lows of automobile ownership with an online community offers insight into the trials and travails of fellow travelers. We simply need to know what everyone else is up to.

Highly paid celebrities and athletes purchase absurdly expensive rides on a regular basis. We see the fruits of their labors in gossip magazines that are impossible to avoid at the supermarket checkout lines. We know we'll never afford such luxuries, but we want to share in their success by going online for quotes. The quotes allow us to experience just a tiny bit of the high life, without actually having to make the payments.

"Back in the day, we thought '3 on the tree' was cool. Now, we must have at least 6 forward speeds controlled through race-inspired paddle shifters mounted on a steering wheel that costs more than our first 3 cars combined."

"The Ferrari Legacy: if you must ask the price, you can't even afford the oil changes."

"A Soccer Mom needs a turbocharged all-wheel drive 8-cylinder minivan like a fish needs a bicycle."

"I get carsick once every 6 months - when the insurance bill arrives."

Chuck Norris drives a 4 door sedan with no air bags, no anti-lock brakes, bald tires, no spare, and an AM radio.

Check out sites such as Edmunds.com for huge volumes of online automobile information. Virtually every make and model that ever graced a showroom has been quantified and qualified by contributors from around the world. Are you looking for a quote on a 2009 Cadillac SRX with leather interior? Edmunds.com has hundreds of them.

Regardless of your automotive predilections, this site will satisfy. Someone somewhere owns the ride that you're obsessing on, and they have already posted their deepest thoughts on the subject. Keep browsing. You're sure to dig up the quote you need.

CarFax.com emerges as the market leader in online quotes. This site maintains a detailed database of information for specific vehicles. Each time a car is bought, sold, dented, repaired, washed, waxed, or recalled, Carfax.com adds another line to the online history of that vehicle. No auto is too insignificant or too important to be overlooked.

Information and quotes provided by this site does come at a price. As a quote shopper, you may enter the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) of your specific vehicle. Using that information, the site cross-references millions of database records to build a customized report just for you. The report offers a brief glimpse into the sordid past your object of affection. Your heartthrob may have been the victim of a hurricane or a chop shop: Carfax.com knows the secrets.

Once you've convinced yourself that CarFax has something to tell you, you may elect to pay a small fee to learn specific details surrounding your VIN. The small fee covers costs incurred in maintaining a huge multi-national database and running TV ads featuring a stuffed fox in a T-shirt. All that stuff adds up in a hurry.

Today's modern automobiles consist of hundreds, possibly even thousands, of highly specific interlocking parts. These components perform a mechanical ballet of motion resulting in your getting to work on time, Many of these gizmos are nowhere near crucial to the transportation function. For example, if the back seat is the wrong shade of russet or the radio takes ever so slightly too long to change stations, technically you're still in a car and technically you can still merge into traffic safely.

On the other hand, just a few minor annoyances may be sufficient to make you wish you'd never signed the ownership papers and started making monthly payments. So what if your door handle is too chromy? Who cares that from behind the car looks like a pickle jar?

Someone cares. Unfortunately, the only way to determine these potential deal breakers is to purchase the vehicle and drive it around. By then, it's often too late to escape from a backbreaking payment book. Fortunately, online quotes may offer a much less expensive alternative to "buy it before you try it."

Online quotes provided by other owners shed light on issues that potential buyers might never consider. Consider this quote from "Jay Z." of Minnetonka, Minnesota:

"I love my 2010 Toyota Camry, but I keep dropping spare change into the little gap between the rear seat and the rear window."

Mr. Z may not be the only driver who finds himself annoyed by such a problem. Many potential car buyers could be saved many seconds of annoyance had they found this online quote before plunking down 2 years salary on a shiny new ride.

Forking over cold cash for an online quote may not seem like a good idea, until you consider the age-old premise uttered by so many ages-old people when nothing is left to say: "You get what you pay for."

Is a free online quote as useful as an unfree online quote? We can't say with all certainty that gratis gossip equates to pay-as-you-read online pages, but the previously mentioned bromide almost always applies to real cars, so it may well also apply to quotes about cars.

Hundreds of years ago, mere primogeniture proved sufficient for the acquisition of reliable transport. No longer may we depend on our lat name to get us a ride. Stroll through a car dealership: no overeager salesperson will lay down for you based on who your daddy was. Cash is king.