Earlier this year, auto dealer salesmen and women popped corks on champagne bottles, blew noise makers, and photocopied their butts on back-office Xerox machines in drunken revelry. The celebration was owed to the news that the U.S. Congress has reached unpopularity levels that finally knocked the sales folks out of last place. They now rival cable installers and can at last look down their noses at another group.

Look, all joking aside, buying a car can suck, even when you know what you’re doing. When you’re still wet behind the ears, or have had the misfortune of having just fallen off the turnip truck this very morning, well, it’s like leading the lamb to their financial slaughter. And the worst of it is that there’s really no good way for the inexperienced to train for their first encounter with their JC Penny suit-wearing foes. I don’t know if you happened to catch the This American Life episode “Cars” where they spend a month at a Long Island Jeep dealership, but it’s quite the eye opener.

That show happens to be from the dealer side, and while there are some tips for the neophyte car buyer, they aren’t all that surprising. What we want to do today is build a compendium of tips for the first time buyer, so that they might be well armed when going into battle with a dealer’s front line soldiers, and the back room generals. If you’ve had experience, here’s a good place to share it. What good advice can you provide to a first-time car buyer?

Image source: Edmunds