Car Hunting on EBay, This Deal Just Clicked

It was time, sadly, to put my car out to pasture. Time to shift out of the pre-cupholder, roll-down-your-own-windows era into the modern automotive age. So after 13 years, I mustered all my courage and ventured back into the market.

But how did I end up shopping for such a major purchase on eBay? I am, after all, a confirmed and proud technophobe, the owner of no iPods or PDAs whatsoever. I didn't have the chops to shop for a car on eBay. It just turned out that way.

I tried to buy the old-fashioned way, I really did. I knew the make and model I wanted, and I knew I was looking for a used car. I even had a target age: three years old, one of the constant stream of vehicles that roll into dealerships after coming off a lease. My intended car came with a four-year, 50,000-mile warranty, so I'd have the better part of a year to find any kinks and get them fixed for free. All in all, almost-new wheels, at less than an almost-new price.

That was the plan, anyway.

I liked the salesman at the dealership. I told him that I was ready to buy, but that I wasn't going to do it that day. Today, I said, I want to drive and ask questions. Tomorrow, I'll come back and talk money. As the 3-year-old son of a friend once told me, with a withering glance I would have thought impossible for someone his age: "Yeah, right."

In the lot, I checked out a few possibilities, picked out my favorite and took it for a ride. I loved it. When the radio blared Bill Withers's "Lovely Day," it only served as confirmation: This was definitely my car.

But it never happened. The salesman first offered a "today-only" deal, which I turned down, and that car was sold before I could return the next day. Then he mentioned a similar car whose price was higher. I set up an appointment to return the next day.

The salesman called in the morning. The car was up on the lift, he said, getting a stem-to-stern checkup so any defects could be fixed and it could be sold as a "certified" used car, commanding a higher price tag. I tried to hide my disappointment. Certification would put the car beyond my reach. Call me when they're finished, I said. The call never came.

And so it came to be that I stumbled -- or was I pushed? -- onto the Internet to buy a car. Okay, so the only thing I had bought on eBay was a pair of sandals. In an age when the online universe is so pervasive that my own mother is Googling me (hmmmm), I figured it was worth a try. In its five years of existence, well over 1 million cars have been sold through eBay Motors. If all those folks could do it, so could I. Maybe.

It was time for the Great Car Hunt, Version 2.0.

Searching for a car on eBay is fun, and frustrating. Type the make of your would-be wheels into the search engine, and dozens of cars are likely to appear, each with exhaustive lists of specifications and sometimes dozens of photographs. You may not have as many pictures of your own children.

And then there are the tantalizing dollar figures. A few dealers set their initial bids at zero or close to it, creating a feeding frenzy -- and an optical illusion, essentially. I'm sorry to say, but you're not going to snag that snazzy Audi for $250, though it may look like that if you watch an auction (usually 10 days long) as it begins. Other sellers start bidding at more realistic levels.