Smart people will do this while test driving a car.

I've been doing test drives for over 21 years and I bet you're doing them wrong. Test drives are a vital part for you to make a well-informed decision when buying a used or new car. See, they're test driving the car. Salesmen are highly trained on where to take you, what to do on a test drive, and do the number one thing that makes it harder for you to say no, and that's make you fall in love. So in this video, I'm gonna show you exactly how to test drive a car, the exact routes to go, and the most important things to look for to make sure you're getting a good deal. You've gotta remember that this video is all about looking at the car, inspecting it to make a good, well-informed decision. We're not talking about negotiating or what to do prior to getting here. So the very first and foremost thing that you want to do is walk around the car to do an inspection. A couple of things that you wanna pay very close attention to are the tires. Tires are getting hard to get here in 2021, and most people do not look up here. Make sure you look on top of the vehicle as well. You have to get up on a tire to do so, do it. Just do it! The next thing you wanna do is make sure that you can get into the car comfortably. This is so important. I'm a tall guy, I'm not real wide, but it's so important. Am I gonna hit my head on this? Do I fit? If you're different body stature, do you fit comfortably in the seat? So you want to make sure that you can get in and out of the car very easily. If you have an ailment, a bad back, bad knees, whatever the case may be, this is the time right now to test that out. The next step in the process is to make sure that you set your steering wheels in the proper position. You get your seat where it's comfortable because you don't wanna have to mess with this on the test drive. You wanna close your door and make sure you get the mirrors inside and outside all adjusted to your comfort. 100% of cars on the market have some sort of blind spot. With more and more safety features, these A pillars, B pillars, and C pillars may be an obstruction and cause you a blind spot. There's nothing you can do about it, but you need to make sure that you can sit here and go along with this car to make sure that it fits your wants and needs. There's always an adjustment period when you get a new car. You cannot take your old car and compare it to the new car for blind spots. It's not gonna happen. One of the next two tips may or may not apply to you, but the first one is gonna be, if you have children, make sure you bring any actable car seats with you because it's very important to make sure they fit, especially if you have two or three. I'm telling you to make it a little bit easier, don't bring kids. The stress is easier when you don't have kids. Now, after September 1st, 2002, 100% of cars made out there have the latch system. I have no idea how many people ask if this has child tether seats. This is something that's been in the law for almost 20 years. And then you wanna make sure that the cargo space is sufficient for your wants and needs. I have people that do all sorts of things, have dog crates, have people. Did I just say people? I don't think people fit back here. But anyways, people's baggage, we'll say that. You got storage here. If you need to put the seats down, the seats down, test all of this stuff out. Now it's the time to get serious. Are you gonna test drive this car or not? So now what you need to do is get out of the car, get away from it, step back here and have someone else start the vehicle for you or use the remote system. What you're going to do is listen to the engine to make sure that it starts up fine and watch the exhaust to make sure you don't get any big white puffs out of it and other issues that may come out of that tailpipe. The next thing you wanna do with the engine running is do a visual inspection and hearing inspection underneath the car. You wanna make sure there's no visible leaks or squeaks or anything like that. Make sure everything's in place, kind of like the dipstick. Make sure all your fluids are full and all that stuff. Now listen, I'm no mechanic and I don't know anything underneath this hood but with 21 and a half years of selling cars, I know what to look for to make sure my clients don't get a bad vehicle. And guys with ties, ladies with scarves, this is a running fan blade right here. Don't get it caught. The next step if all of that passes is to actually physically drive the car. I do have an inspection checklist at chevydudestore.com so you can go download that right now and take it with you so that way you can go through this entire video step-by-step. Do you know what test drives are meant for? No. I haven't tested drove a car in gosh, over 20 years or ever. So I do all the work, right? Yes. So test drives are meant to check out the engine, transmission, brakes, safety equipment like blind spot monitors, all of that stuff to ensure that it's working properly before you make a purchase. Good dealers have got your back if something arises after purchase but most dealers do not. So you have to protect yourself and always remember that when you're buying a used car it's buyer beware and only on new cars is there a limit law. When test driving a car, you want to make sure that you do highway and city driving. It's so important to go out there. Now, car salesmen are gonna have a predetermined set route mostly by their managers to make all right-hand test drive and to make it as short as possible. Now you want to go out and test drive for a good 20 to 30 minutes on your car that you're purchasing. New cars, you can go a little bit less but used cars, you definitely want to get 10, 12, 13 miles in. When I get out on the road, I love to go out and hit the gas really hard to see what acceleration is, let the car kind of settle down, get back out of those gears, let the gears go down and then hit the brakes as hard as I can and get an ABS stop. Now, of course, before you do that, you want to warn your passengers. Yeah. And then punch it again. When you're on city streets, you want to make sure that you don't test drive on a brand new road. Get off on those side roads. If you see a little pothole, not those big deep ones, make sure you hit it. Make sure you hit some cracks. Make sure you take the steering wheel and you kind of go like this to listen for any squeaks and rattles that may be in the suspension as well. And remember, warn your passengers. After your highway drive and your city street drive, the very next thing you want to do is come to an open lot because the next step is a big deal to make sure that nothing's crazy happening while you're test driving the car. So when you get into the parking lot, you want to go about five to 10 miles an hour and do kind of like figure eight. So you want to get a tough left-hand turn and get this figure eight going. When you come out of it, do a hard right-hand turn. You want it, you can hear my tripod in the back. We want to get the car shaking back and forth. At slow speeds, sometimes you can feel that there is something wrong with the car. You hear clunks, you hear clinks, you hear weird noises. Also while you're in the parking lot, you want to be able to test everything out. This is the time that we're going to start going through our driver information center. We're going to start messing with the radio. We're going to put all the cameras on, reverse cameras, 360 cameras, whatever the case may be. We want to make sure everything works down here. We want to make sure we hit these physical buttons to make sure the lights come on. Now in the winter time, you can't test AC because this comes out at 40 degrees. In the summertime, it's going to be tough to test the heat out because it's a hundred degrees out today, right there as it shows in 94 with a heat index of 101. If your car has got the USB ports and Bluetooth, you want to connect those to make sure everything works according to the way it's supposed to. Test out your Apple CarPlay or Android Auto as well. Can we test out eating? Now that we're parked, you want to get out and do another visual inspection. And this time you want to make sure that your nose is on point. When you get out, you want to make sure that the hood is open and smell for anything that is wrong. Coolant leak is really what we're looking for on used cars. On new cars, you will have a burning smell sensation because that's that new engine exhaust and all that stuff being heated up for the very first time. A couple of the biggest tips that I can give you when test driving cars is test drive minimal cars. The more you test drive, the harder it's going to get to make a decision. And most importantly, bring the people with you the first time that are making the decisions with you. All right, now we can eat.