Visor is the best app for car shopping

A few months ago my pal Joel mentioned a new car shopping app to me and even though I only buy a car once every several years, I love to browse listings or figure what my current favorite car is that I don't own, or be able to find the cheapest example of any car I can think of in America as quickly as possible.

As a kid, I watched MotorWeek religiously on PBS and browsed Road & Track at my local library from cover to cover. I'd read the local Autotrader or Pennysaver or Recycler often just to browse what was out there, and eventually I moved on to browsing Craigslist late at night looking for gems I'd never buy (or even get to drive).

These days, I mostly stick to sites like cars.com or multiple-craigslist search sites but they're never quite right and you can't always see things on a nationwide level.

Visor | See the whole market

See the whole market, not just pages of listings.

Visor

I've been using Visor.vin for several months now and it does everything you can imagine. You can look up a car, then look for only used ones, then only ones with the touring package, and then only ones with the green exterior and the tan interior. You can filter cars endlessly to where you can find obscure models that might only number in the couple dozen nationwide, and then find ones going cheaply because the sellers don't know what they have.

Here's an example: a few years ago Volvo released a version of their largest wagon, the V90, in an "Ocean Race" edition, to represent an America's Cup style yacht race team they sponsored. They only sold it for a year, priced around $70k when it was new because it had every option possible plus some custom stuff just for that trim.

Here's a screenshot of the couple dozen used ones that exist in the nation that are for sale:

Visor also has a mobile app, and here's me looking for a used Honda Prologue EV Elite model in just blue because I love the weird turquoise Honda sells it in, and while these new on dealer lots are going for $59k right now, you can find them in the low-to-mid $30k range with less than a thousand miles, quickly and easily on Visor.

I also love their car detail pages. Every other website that lists cars makes you view small images in a gallery or carousel that requires tons of clicking. Visor just puts all 35 photos on a single page so you can see everything at once. So many features at Visor are like this, just totally user friendly.

The perfect tool for the perfect used car

I'm usually "the Car Guy" among friends and people come to me for advice on how to find ones they‘ll like. I love playing matchmaker and I give out recommendations freely once I know what their needs are, and lately I've been telling everyone to seriously consider a used EV for their next daily driver.

A typical gas-powered car contains tens of thousands of parts that can fail in the engine, the drivetrain, the brakes, and the exhaust, while an EV has batteries and a motor and then the interior. EVs are cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, and most are garaged for nightly recharges. They'll run for decades until the batteries give out, so you can think of them like a golf cart. Or, think of an EV more like a dependable toaster on your kitchen counter than any other car has been before.

Also? EV car prices drop like rocks. Typically, most EVs can be purchased used for about half their original price after only 2 years. And Visor is a killer app for those kinds of deals.

If you know exactly what make, model, and options you want in a new or used car, Visor is amazing at finding the needles in the haystack, in just your state or nationwide.

I can't recommend Visor highly enough if you're in the market for cars. I don't know the people behind it (I think it's just two people?) and they didn't pay me to write this post and I even pay for the app myself because I find the pro features so useful.

I have a couple dream cars I keep tabs on every couple months, and if their prices ever drop from the original high stickers down to $20k-30k, I think it'll be time to take the plunge on a used one someday.