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A few months ago, I did something I never thought I would do: buy a car via the Internet. Now I wouldn't do it any other way.

I started shopping last September. The last time I had been in the market, three years earlier, I encountered a sexist salesman whose idea of humor was directing me to the dealership "ladies' room" — behind a tree.

I naively believed that the sales process had evolved since then. Isn't competition supposed to be especially fierce in a slow market?

But what I got this time, sadly, was more of the same. In fact, the dealership game hadn't changed much since I bought my first car in 1992.

The routine for salespeople still seems to be: Corner the customer, then shuttle between the customer and some back-office manager for permission to dicker over this and that. The game is to apply as much pressure as possible to close the deal right away.

When I entered a dealership — foreign or domestic brand — for a product brochure and a test drive, I got sucked into a sales song and dance. Instead of getting to ask about the car, I was barraged with a ton of questions.

The silliest and most annoying question of all: Which color car do you want to test drive?

"Why?" I replied. "Do different colors drive differently?"

The desperation to make the sale today was so intense that after one test drive, a salesman grabbed the gearshift and put it in park, to hurry me along.

Another salesman followed me out the showroom door into the parking lot. He declared: "I am going to have you leave here in a new car today." Wrong.

No follow-up

Yet many of these eager beavers did not make follow-up calls to me or show much willingness to work with me on the price. The whole process works against allowing a customer to fall in love with the car. And isn't that what really seals the deal?

I finally found my car — a Volvo C30 — when I drove one in our press fleet. No salesman, no pressure, just me and the car. It was love at first drive.

So I went to a Detroit-area Volvo dealership to make the big purchase. The salesman said he could find only one C30 in the whole country in the color I wanted, Cosmic White. It was at an out-of-state dealership. The salesman quoted me a final price — no negotiation.

Out of curiosity, I visited the Web site of the out-of-state dealership. Lo and behold, the car was listed for $1,000 less than the price quoted by the local dealership.

Fast and easy

I called the remote dealership. To my surprise, the Internet sales manager immediately offered to negotiate — no approval needed from a backroom manager.

We had a tentative deal in less than two minutes. To raise my comfort level, a trusted friend near the dealership test-drove the car for me.

I gave my local dealer a chance to match the offer. His response: "Buy it from the other guy." Sold.

I customized my C30 by e-mail. I signed the paperwork at home. The information I supplied over the Web to finance the car was well-protected. I returned the forms and a check for the deposit in a prepaid mailer the dealership sent me. The car was delivered to my doorstep in a day, on my schedule.

I'm not surprised that dealers are selling more cars and trucks online. I liked having all the information I needed to buy my new car at my fingertips. I felt empowered by comparison-shopping on the Internet.

It's a tough and competitive world for auto dealers these days. The only way to win is to have an edge.

In my case, the edge was a sales manager who answered his own phone and dealt with me directly. And one who respected me, because he knew I was armed with information from his dealership's Web site.

You may e-mail Jamie LaReau at jlareau@crain.com