Making Sense of Vehicle Warranties

One big reason you buy a new vehicle is to avoid mechanical failures. But you wouldn’t consider buying a car without a manufacturer’s warranty for assurance.


A detailed understanding of your warranty coverage helps you get the most out of the provisions for the vehicle you buy.

An automaker company can use your insecurity, promoting its warranty as a sweetener enticing you to buy its vehicle. But its warranty is also a wager. The manufacturer bets that it built your car correctly and that it won’t have to pay its dealer to repair it. Therefore, you can take a more generous warranty as a suggestion of better quality.

 
Those realizations give you two good reasons to examine warranties when vehicle shopping. First, you can make inferences about fundamental quality from the generosity of a warranty. Secondly, you might actually need the warranty.

 
To make effective comparisons, you should understand and examine the internal features of warranties — both the original manufacturer’s warranty that you’ll get automatically when you buy a new vehicle, and an extended warranty, if you decide to purchase one.

 
When shopping, you need to consider orginal manufacturer warranties and extended warranties separately. They are entirely separate entities.

Published on 12/02/05