There are several avenues in which you can buy a car. One of
the places you can purchase a vehicle is through a car auction.
Even with car auctions you have a couple of different places to
choose from depending on where you live. For instance if you
live in a smaller town you probably have one or two places to
choose from for private car auctions. If you live in a larger
city not only will you have the private car auctions but you
will also have the police auctions. We will discuss both types
of auctions in this article as well as some of the things to be
wary of.

First police auctions are usually going to contain older police
cars they are retiring as well as cars they may have seized in
raids and other police activity where they confiscated the
items. This means you could find some really nice cars and a
great discount or not find much. Usually the police auctions are
held when there are a lot of items to put up for sale. You
should also realize that they are not solely car auctions, often
time boats and other types of motored vehicles are going to be
on the list for sale. The police auctions are also going to
offer less in the way of prices in most cases. Since they seized
the items all they are really looking for is more income to put
back into the department spending budget. This means you can
find a car that is within your price range fairly easily. The
downside is they don't always have the type of car you might be
interested in.

For a specific model vehicle you would have more luck trying
the private auctions. Private auctions are when a company has
cars on the lot from an owner that is looking to sell their car
quickly and easily. For most of us this is a last resort for
selling a vehicle to try and get what we believe is a worthy
price. The owner therefore sets the price of the vehicle and if
the bids never reach that number to car will remain unsold. The
owner does have the option of selling for under their price, but
that is a phone call before it could be released. At car
auctions they are going to start the biding a little lower than
the actual price of the vehicle to get the sale started.

Now that you know about the two different auctions let's look
at a few things you should know. First at a car buying auction
you are not going to be able to test drive the car. You can ask
to look at the engine, to hear the engine run, but you can't
actually go off the lot with the car. This means you are looking
over the car, but not fully testing it and you could wind up
with something that has a lot of mechanical issues if you are
not careful. Most often the car auction will have a mechanic on
hand to test drive the vehicle as well as look it over before
the auction starts.

About The Author: Mark Robinson writes for
http://auto-loans.guidefin.com