Unless you're a sadomaschocist or an absolute gearhead, hunting for a car is a bit like going on a scavenger hunt from hell while you pull your own teeth.

You scour the papers and dealerships for a good deal, all while contending with slick car salesmen and sligtly crooked private sellers, fully conscious of the clock ticking in the background. Make up your mind too fast and you risk buying a junker, but move too slowly and all your hard work and negioations fly out the window while someone else snaps up your dream car.

I just danced through this little circus for the first time since the economy tanked, and I can honestly say that in all this mess there is an upside - it is easier, and cheaper, to buy a car then you could possibly imagine.

Dealerships have been hit really hard. According to an unofficial survey I conducted while I was looking, many areas dealerships have lost as much as 50 percent of their sales, though it was always the other dealerships that were suffering, not that one I was at.

There was none of the smug superiority and super-smooth sales patter this time that used car salesmen are so notorious for. They were desperate and more than happy to knock $1000 off of a car before real haggling had even begun. One fellow even called me every day for a week just to remind me of what deals he had going.

As refreshingly on the run as they are, dealerships can still be unpleasant. Fortunately, we have many other resources to turn to, from the Auto-Trader magazine and the Internet to Craigslist, which even as it bleeds the news industry dry can still find you an awesome deal.

The Auto-Trader magazine has long been a standby of car buyers, and though today it really seems to be losing its edge, it remains a good source for one very good, but slightly askew reason: the people listing in it are often the same people who don't realize you can throw up your car on the internet for free in the same amount of time it takes you to fill out a check to the publishing company.

Without intending to generalize, this means that Auto-Trader is often home to the cars of the elderly, who often run cars less hard and perhaps take better care of them, and may not be out to make as much of a turnover.

Craigslist, though very convienent, is a bit of a game of chance. One starts to wonder what phrases like "car seems to run fine now" and "new paint job" actually mean. For every good post there are two others who are already sold and the seller forgot to take the listing down, and of course the same trick photography that makes people look so much more attractive on their MySpace can be and is easily used to remove, say, the giant gaping hole in the trunk. True story.

A far more dependable, if less colorful source is MSN Autos. I don't often feel the need to plug Microsoft, but they have do a nice search thing up, which allows you to read reviews, reports and bluebook values on every cars year, make and model, and it sockets right in to Autotrader.com, which is great is you know what exactly you're looking for, though the best deals always seem to come up unannounced, like my navy blue Police Interceptor with complimentary side-mounted spotlight.

Whatever fun I (don't) have pretending to be a police officer is tempered by the fact that everybody in front of me feels a strong urge to go ten miles under the speed limit. Now, I know why cops are always pissed off.

Still though, the best resource seems to remain the cars of friends, family members and neighbors, not only because they'll probably give you a better price but because you know how they treated the car and whether 60,000 miles means 60,000 miles or 60,000 miles with the handbrake on and powerslides into every corner.