If you haven't bought a car in a few years you may be pleasantly surprised at how easy the internet makes the whole buying process now. In the past, you pretty much had to visit the dealership to find out what cars were available and go through the whole process of agreeing on the deal and so forth. But most of the disagreeable portions of the car buying process has been eliminated in large part due to the wealth of information available on the internet.

For instance, most dealers now try to keep a listing of their new and used car inventory online so instead of having to physically visit each dealer and walk the lot searching for the vehicle you want, you can now just search it in the comfort of your home instead. Some dealers are still resisting putting their data on the internet for searching as they feel that this puts too much control in the hands of the buyer, but believe me, it's a huge time saver and advantage to the car consumer, and those old school dealers will be forced to change sooner or later.

So now that you can do your car searching online, just either visit each dealer's individual website or you can even try some of the major car sales sites that list thousands of dealers and has a searchable inventory for all of them. One of the advantages of doing your search at these kind of sites is that you will have a much larger pool of car inventories to draw from and can even search within a certain radius of your home to find other dealers that may have what you want too. The more choices that you as the consumer have, the better deal you can usually get.

Once you find a car that meets your criteria, most often you can contact someone in the internet department of that dealership to begin the buying process. Many dealers have started to come around to understand that internet buyers are different from those that just walk onto their lot. They tend to be smart, savvy buyers who don't like to be given the run around and prefer to get down to brass tacks as soon as possible and get the best deal without the normal tricks that many car dealers have been known for.

Often you can negotiate the price of the vehicle through email or phone calls if you are dealing with an experienced internet salesperson. Once you get the deal you want you only have to visit the dealer to test drive the exact vehicle that you will be buying and sign the paperwork.

Hopefully you can see how the internet has made buying a new car much easier and simpler for everyone. So the next time you need a car, why not follow the suggestions above and use the internet to find and make your deal, and save you plenty of time and money in the bargain?

Jim Johnson writes on many consumer related topics including autos. You can find out more about how to buy used car online and new car buying tips by visiting our Auto Review website.