Advertising has its affect

Dear PropellerHeads: Call it what you will, but all these ads for hybrid and electric cars have finally convinced me to get one. But which one?

A: So it's you! I always wonder how come there is so much advertising when clearly I am unfazed by it. And assuming everybody else is like me, people just buy what they want to and advertising is just a waste of everybody's time and money.

But then you come along and give the advertisers credence and the bombardment via television, telephone, email and Ethernet gets even worse. Thank you. I'll tell you which car to buy. I have a 1990 Chevy Caprice with your name on it. It's got so many spare parts, it's clearly a hybrid.

Or. You could use one of the many car selectors on the Web to help you decide which is the best set of wheels for you and your budget.

If you don't necessarily need a car coming directly off the assembly line, you might want to check out CarMax's Vehicle Recommendation Tool. Across seven categories you can specify how important 23 different metrics are to you.

Is having a new car really important or somewhat important? Is having a car made in the USA critical or is price more important? Is getting 45 MPG a must-have or is 25 MPG acceptable? You get the idea.

Obviously, the more factors you supply details on, the fewer cars will be returned when you ask to see the recommendations, or at least they will be sorted better. The results are pretty rudimentary and they offer the ubiquitous compare checkboxes. Naturally, CarMax lets you know where you can scoop one of these bad boys up at one of their local dealerships.

Another one to check out is the Car Chooser at NewCars.com. This has a familiar Amazon-style interface with a list of nine options listed along the left to filter out cars not meeting your needs.

However, their chooser works the opposite of how I'm used to. Instead of checking the features that you want in a product and having the results ignore the products that don't meet those requirements, this one will show you everything and you have to uncheck the features that you don't want. Odd, but still usable.

If you fill in some personal information, they will contact dealers in your area to get a quote for the cars you are most interested in. But it lets you choose which dealers to contact in case you really don't like Rick's Rusty Wrecks of Waynesboro for some reason.

The newest tool to hit the Web is CarSort.com and it comes with a lot of polish. Don't dismiss it's simple start page offering only car type and maximum price. After you click the go button you can filter the cars down by dozens of different metrics divided into 12 categories.

Need A/C and ABS, but don't care about having a full six airbags or power seats, all for under $20K? They've got you covered. Need a 4x4 that also has a great 0 to 60 rating with lots of cup holders? They can set you up. Need a hybrid car with tons of cargo room and satellite radio? Giddy up!

CarSort returns a very easy-to-read list of which vehicles match exactly what you are looking for, and which ones aren't too far off. It lists several pros and cons for each, shows many pictures and lets you list all of the vehicles competing for the same market. It also has technical specifications for each vehicle, but even better, it gives a visual scale indicating if it is above or below average amongst its class.

All in all, if looking for a car, I'd start with CarSort. Of course, what it doesn't offer to do is sell you a car or even put you in contact with someone who will sell you a car. They just want to give you the facts. And it doesn't involve gritty Eminem music or barking dogs, so that would probably be of no interest to you.

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.