tommcparland
Tom McParland
tommcparland
Tom is a contributing writer for Jalopnik and runs AutomatchConsulting.com. He saves people money and takes the hassle out of buying or leasing a car. (Facebook.com/AutomatchConsulting)

All Volvos are FWD based...I would still consider those luxury cars Read more

I will fully contend that the GTI presents a tough argument for this car. I had a 2010 Mazda3 GT 6MT that was great...but I wanted more power, I traded it in for a 15 GTI. Read more

You can...but it adds unnecessary back and forth. If you tell the dealer what you qualify for, it’s on them to discount the car further beyond that. If you are comparing quotes with all the same parameters you will see who is the most aggressive. Read more

This is why you get quotes in writing, tell them what rebates you qualify for and request them to give you a breakdown of: MSRP, sale price, rebates, taxes, fees and the total. The rebates will stay the same from deal to deal since they are coming from the factory, obviously the dealers may discount the car out of Read more

I didn’t need an answer to my Veloster inquiry...the deal was already closed with another store. This phone call came in about 5 days after I communicated by phone and email with a specific salesperson requested a price and never got it. I assumed they weren’t interested and moved on. Read more

Not in this case...there was no related Hyundai dealer in Atlantic City (that's how the call was identified) Read more

This is the unfortunate part of buying cars in FL, they all tack on those crazy dealer fees. But all the dealers do it in FL so they all work on the same playing field, you can avoid those fees...by not buying a car in FL, or GA, or VA or the Carolinas. So by the time you go up the East Coast to avoid the crazy Read more

Typically no...a good dealer is going to give you the most aggressive deal they can on one car or two. Read more

It’s just an ad...and to me, ads are basically meaningless, quotes are what matters most. If you like that car have them send you numbers. I would much rather have a dealer put the MSRP in the ad than play games with rebates, discounts etc...and jerk someone around. Read more

First of all, this is not my client. This column is for readers to submit their situations to a WCSYB form and we pick topics (see link at the end of the article). There is a question on the form that says “Tell us about your situation” it is purely open-ended. We just copy paste that text into the quoted post. She Read more

Of course, she can afford more, she has an expensive Range Rover. The point is she wants to downgrade to something more reasonable and probably use the rest of that money for something else that brings happiness.  Read more