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Review:
The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book
Confident Car-Ownership Made Easy!
Not just another book on how to buy cars! This one, written by a guy who has seen too many women victimized in this business and then edited by six carefully-selected women to make this book speak to women about their needs, will change forever the way you think about all of your auto-related dealings. Coverage includes buying, maintaining, insuring, selling, and much more! This book is for those women who either cannot or will not spend a huge portion of their incomes on transportation. You owe it to yourself to check this out!
The perfect gift!
Why a women's book? During all my years in the business of selling, servicing and repairing cars, it became clear to me that in auto-related dealings, it wasn't just a coincidence that women got burned more often than men. And I learned that it had a lot less to do with men's "car-savvy" than with the people (almost exclusively men) in the business intentionally taking advantage of women because they assumed that women are easy targets. To a lot of women, anything having to do with cars is a "a guy thing," and so they just naturally let the guys make their decisions for them.
But then, most women actively seek advice. They listen when they believe the source is credible. Most men already "know everything" about cars, and for sure about wheelin' and dealin'. That's why this book is addressed to women.
And why all this emphasis on used cars? Doesn't everybody know that when you buy a used car, you're just buying somebody else's troubles?
Picture this: You buy a brand new car, and after a year something comes up and you have to sell it. It's now a used car. Is it going to be a problem for its new owner?
The day you bought it, it depreciated about 30%. Now, only one year later, it has depreciated up to a whopping 50%! So the new owner gets your $14,000 car for $7000. Who got the better deal, you or the used-car buyer?
Buying used cars is definitely not always taking on somebody else's problems. Sure, some used cars have flaws. So do some new cars. Used cars that turn out to be lemons are the exceptions, though, and what The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book will teach you is how to select a used car that's as good as a new one. It's not all that complicated, it's not a "guy thing," and once you know the techniques, they will be indispensable to you in keeping your new (used) car running (nearly) forever.
The focus of The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book is to obtain maximum pleasure and utility from your car with a minimum of expense and stress. You'll save money by getting a good deal in the first place. You'll never get taken advantage of on repairs, insurance or any other dealings with your car and by getting the most from your car when you need to sell it. In short, you'll get more value from your every hard-earned transportation dollars, and have fun in the process. In today's economy, it's important for most of us to use our incomes wisely. Even though spending a fortune on one's car is widely accepted as a fact of life, it really isn't necessary!
Learning simple aspects of car-ownership, maintenance, repairing and insuring, can change forever the way you deal with these issues. It can save you thousands of dollars and do away with the hassles and heartaches. With that comes a confidence and peace of mind that you've probably not known before in your auto-related transactions. The more savvy you are about your car and about how the whole car-business works, the more effective you will be in your car-related transactions. Your new confidence will be enough to avert a lot of dubious dealings before they begin.
In The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book, you'll learn to avoid the manipulations in the sales office which often cause customers to pay thousands of dollars more for their purchases than was originally implied. Sadly, this has become industry practice. Auto dealers conduct seminars and intensive training workshops to teach these tactics to their sales people. Over the years, these training practices have been fine-tuned by professional psychologists skilled in the intricacies of the buying mind.
Against this kind of training, Ms Jane Doe, who buys one car every few years hasn't had much of a chance. Until now!
I'll show you why many efforts to buy an "economy car" wind up being anything but economical. You'll learn the important difference between "miles per gallon" and "miles per dollar." I'll even show you how to completely avoid the costliest item of car-ownership for most people: depreciation! You'll also learn how to deal with repairs when they become necessary, and even how to get the best mileage from your insurance dollars.
There's no need to ever be intimidated again by the thought of doing business with car dealers or repair shops, or by the guys who think women don't know anything about their cars. Please rest assured that there are honest people in the business and good cars out there. I'll show you how to find them.
There are already other books and periodicals available that include lists of cars of recent years that have proven to be lemons. I purposely didn't include such a list for you to try and memorize. Instead, I'll show you how to easily detect deception and problems, and how to easily smoke out the lemons on your own.
The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book is presented in such a way that you can choose from the table of contents any topic that's of interest to you. Wherever you read, there will be references to any other chapters that give further specific related information, and the index will help you easily locate anything discussed in the book. There is no need to read this book in any particular order, although it would be to your advantage to peruse every word sooner or later.
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Topics covered include:
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About the Author
Skip Thomsen, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been a car nut since he was sixteen, and that was a long time ago. Since then, he's owned hundreds of different vehicles and several repair and body shops in both California and Oregon. He was a licensed auto dealer in both states for many years. His shops earned the reputation of doing some of the finest work available. Many of his customers were owners of classic, racing and special-interest autos. His mechanical expertise has served him well in building successful show- and race-cars from the ground up. He believes that contrary to popular myth, mechanical breakdowns are not a fact of life.
Over the years in various auto businesses, Thomsen observed that women are regularly seen as easy victims for every kind of moneymaking scam imaginable. In recent years, "feeling helpless" came up often when listening to women talk about their auto-related dealings.
After his retirement from the auto business in 1989, he started formulating a car book for women who want an excellent car at a reasonable price and who feel uneasy about dealing with dealers, mechanics and others in the trade. With the able help of his six female editors (see "Meet the Editors!"), that book has now been published as The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book.
Thomsen has successfully self-published two how-to books in other fields and is marketing them through his company, Oregon Wordworks, in Portland, Oregon, and through booksellers all over the country. He has also written numerous magazine articles on various how-to topics, including several on dealing with cars. Reviews of his writing consistently commend him for his ability to make complex topics clear and easy to understand.
Thomsen is considering a future book on buying, owning and enjoying special-interest autos. Covered to some extent in The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book (Chapter 5), this exciting field of motoring allows one to drive a luxury dream-car or perhaps an as-new, vintage collectible for less than the price of a new economy car. It also eliminates the huge expense of depreciation, and in the bargain can bring fun back into driving.
Mr. Thomsen is now happily living in rural Hawaii with his runs-like-new twelve-year-old convertible and his two cats. -------------------------
Meet the Editors!
I want to express my appreciation to the six women without whose patient, careful and thorough editing help, The Intelligent Woman's (Used) Car Book would not be. These particular women were selected because of their diverse uses for, interests in and attitudes about their cars, cars in general, and all the things having to do with cars. All of them said they learned a lot from reading the material and all of the material reads a lot better because of their efforts.
Barbara Adams lives in rural Hawaii. Really rural Hawaii. She is a professional bureaucratic problem-solver, mediator and mentor to those in need. She especially likes to see how many miles she can squeeze out of her cars before Hawaii's notorious rust finally claims them. She says that one of the most useful tools to keep in her car at all times is her sense of humor. Her editing contribution was primarily in the areas of content and concepts and was especially valuable because of her expertise in keeping cars like old Pintos with football-sized rust holes running as long as possible.
Gayle Chavez also lives in Hawaii and has for so long that I won't even mention she's a transplant from Southern California. She is thirty-something, has her own business and drives her tiny car a lot. She uses it for business and pleasure, loves it almost as much as her cat, enjoys driving and gives her car impeccable care. She makes sure that it is always serviced on schedule. Any little irregularity is taken care of immediately and her precious car is always spotless. I picked her as an editor because of her enthusiasm about her car, because of the way she takes care of it and not incidentally, for her excellent command of English. She has a better-than-average grasp of the basics of both a car and of the human mind (BS in Human Services and graduate work in Psychology), so her suggestions on anything that she found difficult to understand were especially valuable.
Penelope Frey is a mid-thirties computer software instructor and makes her home in Huntington Beach, California. She has a love for classic and special-interest cars, drives a '69 Mustang (when she's not riding her Harley) and has a feel for things mechanical. She doesn't like the new cars; she feels they have no style or character any more. She added her own unique insight to the editing procedure and made a lot of valuable corrections and suggestions on how to make the material (especially the technical) as clear as possible.
Carol Kuehn, early fifties, lives in the woods of Northern California. She drives a late-model Jeep 4x4 pickup that she bought new because she wanted to "avoid buying someone else's troubles." (That was before she read this book.) She holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford and is a freelance writer as well as an avid gardener and horticulturalist. She uses her truck for all the associated practical reasons. Carol is a stickler for precise grammar, so we went 'round and 'round a few times with some of the liberties I took in keeping the book in a conversational tone. I believe we reached a happy compromise and she finally put away her red pencil. (I think she wore out several.)
Osha Reader, 53, runs a retreat center in the Northern California Sierra. She has two cars, a vintage Porshe that she's owned for nearly thirty years and an Acura (which she bought new before she knew better!). She asked me to add this to her bio: "Like so many other women, I've assumed it was better to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for a new car than to buy a used one that might break down. Skip's book has completely changed this attitude. Now I'm happily anticipating the exciting special-interest cars I can choose from in the future at a fraction of what I've been paying for new ones in the past." Osha has a Ph.D. in nutrition and a degree in naturopathic medicine. She is a published author and helped polish and edit the final draft of the manuscript.
And then there is my dear friend who chose to remain nameless. She is 42, a recently-retired computer scientist who has lived in Kansas City for the last twenty years. She owns a Honda Accord that she bought new and avoids driving whenever possible. I picked her as an editor for two reasons: her unique attitude about cars in general and about driving in particular and the fact that she has proven herself to be an editing nitpicker without equal. Her editing expertise focused mainly on content and how it was presented. She found (and I subsequently rewrote) every word, phrase and paragraph that she felt, from a woman's point of view, was unclear, ambiguous or worse.
Thank you all, Skip Thomsen
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