Katie,

First each one of us made the selection of the type of car we wanted and thought we could afford.

Myself it was the Toyota Camary, Honda Accord and Mazda 626.

I then went to several different dealers to test drive the cars, and I didn't just test drive each car at one dealer, I hit several Mazda, Toyota and Honda dealers and did the test drives, getting several VERY different price quotes. When I finally made my decision on the Mazda, I went to Yahoo and checked on the dealer's invoice prices. Next I got quotes from three different online auto sales(NOT DEALER) sites. Then I went to my Credit Union's autoland and got a price quote also. At that point my credit union had the best price. Then I went to http://www.mazdausa.com and picked out all of the options, colors and features I wanted. Then I asked for a quote from all of the dealer in my local area and I received two very quick phone calls with quotes and one which I couldn't believe.

I went to my closest dealer where a friend of mine is a salesman there and they couldn't beat the deal, suggesting that I should go for it. So, I did. Final price was $1,025.00 less than the Credit Union and $740.00 less than my closest dealer could go. That was on my current 1998 Mazda.

My supervisor just recently purchased his Toyota Camary Solara loaded with everything because the Fremont, CA Online dealer was so much lower than any quote he could find. Only difference between his online work was that EACH Toyota local dealer had their own online site where he had to fill out and submit each form(Very time consuming but worth it) unlike the Mazda site where you fill it out and when you submit it it goes to all of the local online dealers at the same time.

P.S. One major consideration in my choice on the Mazda was the National Theift rate I found online. It wasn't even mentioned. Toyota and Honda's were #1 and #2 at that time.