What to consider when buying your first car
What should you consider when buying your first car? We’re here to help you with this guide.
Congratulations, dear reader! You’ve reached the stage of life where you’ve worked hard and put aside enough money in the bank to make the financial commitment of purchasing your first car. Buying a new car is a huge responsibility. For a first-timer, the process can be overwhelming.
Don’t get overwhelmed just yet, as once you section out the thought process into manageable steps with the help of our guide here, you’ll be in a more confident frame of mind on what to consider when purchasing your first car.
What do you need the car for, and how do you choose a car type?
A good question to ask before making any huge decision is why. What is motivating you to purchase a car? Is it to give yourself more control over your personal transport plans and to make the commute to and from work easier? Or is it to have ease of mind and spend more quality time with friends and family while travelling around town in comfort? Understanding how you intend to use your car plays a huge part in knowing what type of car to choose.
While the sedan body style such as that offered by the Toyota Corolla Altis and Toyota Camry is still often realised as the ‘standard’ car silhouette, the emergence and mainstream acceptance of other designs like the sport utility vehicle (SUV), seven-seater multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) and all sorts of crossover styles has given us a wider array of choices than ever.
The small hatchback is still ideal as an urban runabout because they are usually easy to drive on narrow streets and have great all-round visibility. However small urban SUVs also have the advantage of a better view of the road and more luggage space, though usually at the tradeoff of slightly poorer fuel economy. Yet, there are plenty of stylish small cars, such as the Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid, that blend well into the cityscape if your work and leisure lifestyle involves driving through the city a lot.
Are you one that needs the car to be able to carry lots of sports equipment or similar? Then a larger SUV with its large-opening boot, such as the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid or Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid, would really suit your style. The additional interior space often offered by mid-sized SUVs make them great family cars too.
If you’re going to be ferrying a large family around often, a 7-seater MPV might suit your needs better than a sedan. Whereas if you have people with limited mobility travelling with you often, a spacious MPV that features easy-access sliding doors would really help you out. The space that an SUV or MPV provides also makes those road trips up to Malaysia (or further North) more comfortable.
If you only expect to ferry more than four people occasionally, a small MPV with foldable seats in the third row in a car like a Toyota Sienta Hybrid might suit your needs better, and it will be much cheaper to maintain too.
What should you consider when buying your first car?
BUDGET
Before you start listing your dream cars, it’s important that you have a realistic idea of how much you can afford to spend maintaining your car annually. It’s not just the monthly payments and fuel costs, but you need to factor in the annual insurance premium, season parking fees for both home and office, and leave some extra maintenance-related budget too.
Toyota has an online affordability calculator to help you estimate the downpayment, interest rates, and monthly payments.
SAFETY
Safety features in a car are also something you want to look out for when making a decision. Almost every single new car you can buy in Singapore now comes fitted with airbags as standard, but there are more things to take into consideration, with systems like traction control and electronic stability control helping you stay in control if the car’s tyres start to slip on loose surfaces.
Yet, safety features in cars is a constant work in progress, so next-generation cars like the Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid SUV come packed with even more in the Toyota Safety Sense suite of active safety systems. Sensors and cameras built-in around the car help guide the car in its chosen lane with lane tracing assist, automatic emergency brake helps bring the car to a rapid stop when a collision in imminent, and dynamic cruise control allows the car to automatically accelerate and decelerate to match the speed of the car ahead at a safe distance.
All these safety systems really do give you extra peace of mind when on the road.
RELIABILITY
Check credible new car review sites and owner forums to understand how reliable the cars on your shortlist generally are. All motorised vehicles have plenty of moving parts that will wear out with use, and all will require regular maintenance to stay in good condition.
Toyotas are known to be among the most reliable mainstream cars you can get for your money, which means that if the regular servicing scheduled maintenance is adhered to, the car is likely to be problem-free for much of its life, saving you from spending more on major repairs.
RESALE VALUE
What happens when you need to eventually move on from the car? It typically gets sold either on your own terms or to a used car dealer. If you’re risk averse, or just want to make a sound, practical choice, a mainstream, popular car model with a proven track record tends to hold its value better on the used car scene.
FUEL EFFICIENCY
If you expect to cover a lot of distance, you might want to consider a petrol-electric hybrid car. You’ll still be going to the pump, but a lot less thanks to the self-charging electric motor assist in hybrid engines, saving you fuel and money.
Plug-in hybrids. Also known as PHEVs, might also be something you want to consider. They function the same as hybrids, except the batteries are large enough to give you pure electric driving range enough for urban use. And when you run out of juice, the system is able to intelligently recharge the battery as you drive on combustion power, or you can stop at a charging station.
Toyota has a wide range of cars with a variety of engine options to suit every realistic budget. If you’re looking for an SUV for example, there’s the small Yaris Cross, great for first-time car owners and small families, to the medium sized Corolla Cross and up to the large and luxurious Toyota Harrier, all available with very economical petrol-electric hybrid drivetrains.
Nothing beats visiting the dealership’s showroom to get a real feel on how your potential car drives and looks for real. The Toyota dealership’s friendly sales consultants will also advise you on financing and insurance matters, putting all your lingering questions to rest. Besides, the only way to decide if this very big financial commitment is exactly what you want is to actually try driving one in a test drive.
With these in mind, you are now ready to walk into the dealership to purchase your dream car!