Carsabi.com and other classified aggregators are changing this. Carsabi creates an easy to use car search engine where the customer inputs desired car model, price range, and any other options along with location. The engine then returns all cars within the search criteria near the user (or nationally if the distance filter is set high) with links to the original listings. Users can view basic information such as price, mileage, VIN, and transmission along with a few photos for any search result before going to the original car advertisement – many individuals use this feature to quickly get a sense for the national market before trying to find a good deal in their own city.
The site is fairly new, and while it appears to only present Craigslist outside California at the moment it has a clean interface and quick response time – applying new filters immediately changes the returned car listings in a similar fashion to Google Instant. The site also has plans to include optionally search all dealerships nationally in the next few months.
In brief, if you’re trying to find a rare car, save money, or just get to your next automotive purchase as quickly as possible you might give Carsabi.com a visit – its clearly a new entrant into the online automotive space but addresses a significant need in quickly browsing private car listings. A few site screen shots are included below:
