Far North journalist Sandy Myhre, who has made a career from driving cars and writing about them, has penned a book to help non-experts get the best deal when buying a car.
Ms Myhre, known to Northland Age readers as the editor of the monthly Focus magazine, has covered motor racing as a correspondent for 30 years. And, like millions of other people around the world, is a car-buying customer.
Her new e-book, Never Raced, Rolled or Rallied: The Happy Road to Buying Your Next Car, stemmed from her experiences when on the look-out for a car for herself after returning from living overseas.
"I didn't know whether to buy from a dealer, an auction house or the internet or even to buy something that's been sitting on the side of the road with information on a piece of cardboard stuffed into the window," she said. Throughout her years as a motoring journalist she says the first question most people ask is: "How do I know if the car I'm buying is a sound investment and won't cough its clogs two days after buying it?"
"Our biggest lifetime investment is a house and it's fairly easy to see rotting weatherboards or rusting downpipes. But you can't always see what's going on inside the engine of a car or underneath it, so how do you know if the car you are buying is a sound investment and won't cough its pistons two days after buying it?
