A one stop guide to motoring and motorsport in the United Kingdom.

Top 5 Sites to Buy Cars Online

Last Updated: October 19, 2011

In the past most car owners looking for cover through www.endsleigh.co.uk would have bought their vehicles from a local trader. For a long time it has been convention to buy a new or used car at a dealership. The obvious pitfall being that the customer is limited to a narrow selection of cars from a few locally based garages. Buying a car online has revolutionised the car market due to the fact that the buyer can view a wider variety of cars without the pressurised sales environment or excessive travel costs. To illustrate the growth of the online used car trade, a UK car is sold on E-bay every four minutes.

There is an array of reliable sites ready to facilitate your search for an online purchase. Ebaymotors.com, autotrader.com, cars.com, yahoo.com, carbuyer.com, are often listed in the top five sites to buy cars online. They offer features such as auctioned sales, reviews, multiple search terms, and emailed vehicle matching for even the most exacting criteria. You can obviously search by make, model, year, and mileage but where the real advantage transpires is through criteria such as distance from your home, owner against dealer comparison, and extensive price ranges on a single make of car. If you are unsure of the credibility of a certain website you can easily find reviews online.

When buying you car online you should make the most of all the resources that the net offers. There are a host of reliable Pricing Guides and consumer websites to assist you. They will pinpoint common mechanical flaws that persist in some vehicles, and they can help to inspire your choice by illustrating the full scope of cars available.

Just as buying a car online has transformed the car market, buying insurance online is just as easy and competitive. Endsleigh offers an insurance service that searches a wide range of UK providers in order to find you your best deal. This is why it is hard to dispute that buying online will often be the cheapest option when it comes to motoring.

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Car terminology explained

Last Updated: October 19, 2011

Everyone has heard of such common technical car terms as ‘suspension’, ‘rear wheel drive’ and ‘carburettor ‘, but not everyone knows what exactly these terms actually mean. These are just a few of the commonly used car terminologies along with brief descriptions of their meanings.

Suspension

This refers to the collection of springs within the car, such as the torsion bars and shock absorbers, which provide the car with cushioning on uneven and bumpy road surfaces. They also ensure that the wheels remain on the road at all times, ensuring better control of the vehicle and surface traction for the driver.

Traction

This refers to the ability of the car’s wheels to grip the road surface and move forward and backwards on a variety of road surface types and conditions.

Carburettor

This is a piece of equipment, which vaporises petrol while blending it with air to the degree required by the car’s engine. The carburettor works by means of a filter attached to it, through which the air goes. The air then mixes with the petrol inside the carburettor, before entering the engine’s combustion chamber to be burned.

Rear wheel drive

This can have two meanings. Firstly it simply can refer to the mechanisms powering the back wheels of the car. However, it is also to a car driven primarily by the wheels at the back rather than the front. Such cars have the engine located at the back of the vehicle, where they are united with a rear-wheel drive transaxle.

Transmission

This is the part of the car, which controls the ability to move the vehicle at different levels of power and different speeds, depending on the situation. There are two different types of transmission, manual and automatic. Manual transmissions are controlled by the driver by means of the gearshift and clutch, while automatic ones are controlled by hydraulics.

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