Chicago Car Shopping

My cousin recently moved to Chicago for school. She found a great apartment and is pretty much settled at this point - the last big thing she needs to do is get herself a car. It's the first time she's gone car shopping on her own, so she asked me to help her find something. Thanks to the magical wonders of the internet, I can help her find used cars in Chicago from here on the East Coast.

She's looking for something relatively small. And of course being a student she's on a budget, so she needs something affordable, but also wants something reliable that won't give her any problems. So we've been looking at cars like the Toyota Corolla and the Ford Focus. And yes, if she finds one in a cute color that would be the icing on the cake.

I found this really helpful site called Used Cars Chicago 101 that has a lot of great information about buying a car in the Chicago area as well as listings from a bunch of local dealerships. It's been the perfect site for my cousin to use to start her search. They even have a blog, which is a bonus because you can never been too well-informed when you're trying to buy a car. (This is especially true for women because there are still some dealers out there who assume that women are clueless when it comes to cars.) For example, their current featured blog post is on Used Car Economy and the Recession, which has some interesting insights on how the economy has affected the used car market.

My cousin is going to go out to some dealerships this weekend, and based on the research that we've been able to do I'm pretty confident that she'll find a great deal.