New cars are alien to me, but I take some solace knowing that buying a new vehicle is totally perplexing to most people, too.

I've never bought a new car. The only experience I've had with new-car-buying was when my folks went shopping for their last car about half a decade ago. They managed to get a couple grand off of a second-gen Prius by cross-shopping against all the other Toyota dealers in for a few towns over and shopping for it when gas was cheap. I'm not sure what the takeaway is with that one, other than you can get a good deal buying a particular kind of car 'off season,' if you can call it that.

What lessons did you learn when you bought a new car?