DriverSide.com : easy to use and saves a lot of time
Aug 26 '08
The Bottom Line DriverSide.com- great free website that's easy to use, and contains just about everything you need to know about your car. Totally recommended for the prospective buyer or car owner!
DriverSide.com was created to make researching a car easier than ever before. No longer do you have to sift through different sites all bookmarked with the same make and model, or read through hundreds of forum posts to find out how much a repair job is going to cost you.
It is essentially a price guide, user-review/question bulletin, value estimator, repair cost estimator, service schedule, well pretty much everything imaginable you could expect from 10 different car sites in ONE easy to use site.
When you select your car from the drop down menu, you can quickly find out all you will need to know about the vehicle:
Original MSRP
Invoice Price
Fuel Economy
Annual Cost of Ownership
Quality Ratings
Similar Cars in the Category
Maintenance Log (user created)
Maintenance Schedule (dealer service)
Selling Estimate (for both trade in and private sale)
Pars & Accessories List
Reviews/Questions from Owners
Cars for Sale
Possible Recalls/Safety Issues
Value Forecast
News Articles (and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting)
The best features in my opinion are the Repair Cost Estimate tool and the User Generated Service Log. While some of us will know how much it will cost to replace a head gasket, most of us wont. Plug your car's info into the site, go to the service tab, select your repair and bingo- you get the estimated cost for both the part AND the labor involved (and how long it should take!).
If you buy a car new, the dealer will give you a user manual that has a maintenance schedule. If you're like me, chances are any books get sucked into an abyss of nothingness, and the user manual is now a thing of the past. DriverSide has this information available for most cars, letting you know when you should get your timing belt replaced for example. It also allows you to quickly create your own log, this way you have a record of what you have done to your car, increasing the value of your car in the process. Trust me- any buyer with half a brain will see that you took care of the car and not be afraid to offer you more along the actual going rate.
It's no use having all of this information is it's a pain to use, thankfully DriverSide.com seems to have been designed to make the navigation process as simple as possible. There are simply two different menus that frame the content- one to enter your car's info, and another to select what you need. Everything is done in an easy to read font, and there are no flashy effects to distract the easily distracted.
And all of this still wouldn't matter if the data wasn't accurate. Fortunately the people behind DriverSide realized this, so the information is sourced through some of the most reliable providers in the industry. My mother recently replaced the brakes on her 99 Ford Taurus. The mechanic charged her a flat $215- DriverSide's estimate is $228. It isn't going to give you an exact price, but it'll give you the knowledge you need to decide whether or not you're getting toyed around with.
There are still some things DriverSide can't compete with at the moment. Right now the site is in beta, so the community is still in a growing process. For this reason, if you post a question about an obscure model you might have to wait a while for an answer- so you'll probably be better off on an enthusiast forum for this type of thing. Besides this, everything else is so easily accessed that it just doesn't make sense to waste your time searching 4 or 5 sites to essentially arrive with the same information.
I'm sure that once this website is finished with their beta, it will make users rethink what a car website can actually do for them. It's off to a great start, and I can't wait to see what a giant this site is going to become.
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Epinions.com ID:
bquintos
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