Franklin Avenue

When I bought my trusty Honda Civic DX (nicknamed "3SKE," because of its license plate) in 1996, I called around to a variety of dealers and asked them to fax me their itemized "fleet price" (I told them that I was hunting for a car for my "business"). It gave me a chance to see how much the dealers were alotting for the manufacturer's price, as well as their profit. In the end, however, I went online to a site called Autobytel.com. Now keep in mind, this was 1996, before the dot.com craze really took off. Autobytel didn't actually sell the car-- it contracted with a variety of dealers across the country. The site got me a price even better than the ones I had faxed to me-- so I went with their suggested dealer (Penske Honda, now known as Honda World)-- even though it was all the way in Orange County. Fast forward to 2003. Scribe Virginia Postrel writes about online car shopping in the New York Times, and discovers that indeed, people wind up with much better prices (for the most part) than the traditional haggling-then-pretending-to-leave-the-dealership-then-coming-back-and-haggling-some-more method-- at least 2 percent better. And here's the interesting part: According to Postrel, the online sites have become the great equalizer in car sales. Because you're not buying the car in person, everyone gets the same deal. In other words, says one researcher, "Everybody paid the white male price...Suddenly it became totally irrelevant what your race or gender or income or education was."