Tips for First-Time Car Buyers

Getting your first car is an incredible feeling but also a matter of making incredibly important choices. Between navigating the nuances of car safety ratings, grappling with insurance premiums, and making decisions on buying versus leasing, there’s a labyrinth of choices to wade through. As a budding motorist just making their start, you must make informed decisions to ensure your vehicle suits your needs, safety, and budget.

Forget all the other patronising guides you’ve found online so far, here are some tips that go beyond the highway code and help you choose the right car as a first-time buyer.

Safety is Supreme

When just starting out on the road, you’ll want to be safe in the knowledge that you’ll be well-protected should anything happen to you. The best tool for researching car safety is Euro NCAP, which has an extensive archive of safety test ratings for new and old cars. They are highly regarded as the authority for car safety, and each review details what features the car has that enhance safety. The reviews all culminate in a star rating out of 5 which makes it easy to focus on the well-made cars.

Keep in mind that standards have increased significantly in the last few years, so a 5-star rating from this year has a lot more merit than a 5-star rating from 2013, for example. In the end, not only does it provide peace of mind, but having a provably safe car reduces your insurance premiums, keeping your expenses down.

Handling Car Insurance as a First-Time Buyer

If you’ve not long started driving, your insurance premiums will be higher as you have little real-world experience of driving safely over a long period. The good news is that this will be the most you’ll ever see it in your driving journey, so it’s all uphill from here if you continue to demonstrate that you can drive reliably.

As for the car you’ll be driving, these are assigned a group from 1 to 50, 1 being the most affordable to insurance and 50 being the least. Insurance companies don’t have to follow these ratings when setting their premiums, but it does give you an accurate idea of what to look for for your first car. You’ll find that small and well-equipped city cars such as the Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto Hatchback and Volkswagen Up! have the best insurance grouping.

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Finding a Trustworthy Seller

Buying a car is a considerable investment, so you don’t want to risk being taken around the houses or even buying a car that’s already on its last legs. Purchasing through a reputable dealer rather than a private sale is the ideal way to go since you have buyer protection in your favour.

Finding the right dealership can be a maze, but there are a few clues that can help you. Look at their reputation through reviews on Google, as a generable output of no-problems reviews shows that they are consistently delivering sales that get you what you are looking for. Often, a lack of transparency about the buying process is a red flag, so have a browse of the dealership’s site to find the finer details.

Consider Leasing Your First Car

Dropping a massive lump sum on a brand-new car is a considerable risk – what happens if the car needs changing sooner than you anticipated? Financing a new car is an option, but once you’ve finished the monthly payments, you’ll likely have to be saddled with the increasing number of maintenance and service costs when things start to go wrong.

Car leasing, however, is a fresh alternative that puts you in control of your finances. Essentially, it is a long-term loan of a car in which you only pay for the value depreciation of the car, meaning you only have to pay a fraction of the cost to drive it. Personal leasing contracts typically last from 1-5 years, so you’ll never have to encounter the hassle and rigmarole of later-life repairs, servicing and even MOT if you have a contract of less than three years. Best still, once the contract is finished, you simply return to the car and you can start the process again with a newer model with better fuel efficiency, technological features and up-to-date looks.

Here at cars2buy, we’ve trawled through the UK to find and display leases only from verified lease dealers, so you can be sure that every lease on our site has our seal of approval. What’s more, having all the best UK car leases in one place means you can speed up the leasing finding process by helping you search, filter, sort and compare them all to find the perfect lease deal for you. Browse our curated collection of new car leases today and you could be using a brand-new car to start your driving journey sooner than you think.