There are a lot of good sites that help you plan for the future. My favorite planning sites include ways to look into exactly what you want, and turn your plans inside and out while looking at them from many different angles. I’m talking, of course, about car configuration sites.

For example, at the Porsche site I can plan for that time in the future when I will own a 911 Turbo. You can do similar planning activities at Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus, and Jaguar. In fact, most car companies include a car configuration tool that lets you see what the car you want will look like before you set foot on a sales floor.

The best of these sites will attempt to give you a feeling for what it is like inside one of their cars. They show the car from all sorts of different angles, and you are left with the desire to climb through the door and sink into those soft-looking seats, or shift down to pass a car on that curvy highway you were on last summer.

Some sites provide a postage stamp sized representation of the car you have configured. Modifying the specs on these cars becomes a bit tedious and boring. Often they are accompanied by only a few selection criteria, and choosing your car doesn’t take enough time. Try configuring a Suburban on Chevrolet’s site and you may quickly loose interest in this behemoth.

One of the best sites for configuring your dream car belongs to Jaguar. It is simple to use, straight forward, and offers a lot of options. They even include a selection of backgrounds, so you can see, for example, what it will look in front of that mansion you are also planning for.

Jaguar includes many different color and wood combination schemes, and you are given a certain amount of leeway, but you won’t be able to select two colors that, in the opinion of Jaguar, clash when together. I’m impressed at the integration that the web design team has with the interior design team at Jaguar. However, even with these restrictions, you are given a lot of choices.

Porsche is a great site for planning for the future. You are given a huge number of options, and they take you through the process rather intuitively. You can backtrack and see how various interior colors look with your favorite exterior paint job. I’m particular to Porsches (my wife prefers the thought of using a Jaguar for shopping), so it’s great to go onto their site and dream, or rather, plan.

I also like how most sites will not let you pick two incompatible options. Though frustrating at some times, it adds to the excitement.

Such sites are tailored to the client the company serves. Porsche enthusiasts, like me, enjoy driving, and don’t really care too much about the shopping mall that is whizzing by. Jaguar enthusiasts, like my wife, are more interested in the mall that is to the left and has lots of parking. On the Porsche site, the focus is on the drivability of the car. On the Jaguar site, the focus is on the surroundings–hence the choice of backgrounds that is lacking for my midnight blue 911 Turbo.

What we can learn from these sites is how engaged the shopper becomes. People like me don’t go to these sites because they want to spend a short amount of time there. If a car configuration does not take enough time, provide enough choices, or only shows a postage stamp sized representation of the automobile I want to purchase some day, I loose interest very quickly.

As a surfer, I want to be engaged. I didn’t go to the site to be bored or because I am not interested. I want to be drawn in, persuaded that Porsche is the car for me. I want Porsche to confirm my penchant for their cars.

I suppose that choosing a Suburban isn’t the same, and the web site is designed more practically so that you can decide between a Suburban, Yukon XL, or a Ford Excursion. All these sites make choosing options a quick process, and they even provide a side-by-side comparison of each vehicle.

This, of course, is all marketing, and is almost as good as going to the dealership. If you are really in the market for a new car, using the configuration sites is a great way to educate yourself about the various options available, the differences between all the available models from each manufacturer, and what you can afford.

Of course, looking at the manufacturers’ sites is not a good way to get objective opinions about anything you want to buy, much less automobiles. There are dozens of consumer sites abound on the net, and you would be remiss to skip some of these. You may have to pay for the better ones, but I have benefited greatly by forking out the dough for objective opinions before buying the car, instead of forking out my well earned cash for repairs.

Using the Internet to buy a used car is just as fun as purchasing a new one. There are many used car sites, and many manufacturers have links to their own pre-owned (and all the other euphemisms for used cars, including pre-loved) vehicles. This can also give you information about how well the value of the car you want to purchase is maintained over the years.

I like to go to the used car sites to find a good deal on a Porsche. I can’t afford one yet, but it helps me plan for that time when I can at least afford a pre-loved 911 that someone is trying to get rid of too quickly.

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