Write the brief before you write the list
Before naming a single candidate, write four lines describing the life the car has to fit. How many long drives a year, how many passengers in the back and how often, what has to go in the boot, where it will be parked, and who else will drive it. This takes ten minutes and it settles arguments that would otherwise run for months, because most disagreements about cars are actually disagreements about the brief.
Then add the two conditions that are specific to this climate: how long the car will stand in direct sun on a normal day, and whether anyone regularly sits in the back on a summer afternoon. Those two answers alone will remove a surprising number of otherwise attractive cars from consideration, and removing them early is far kinder than discovering the problem in August.
Cut the notebook down to five
Go through your show notes and mark every car that provoked a genuine reaction. Then apply the brief ruthlessly. A car that cannot take the luggage, cannot be seen out of, or cannot be parked where you park is not a candidate, however much you liked it under the lights. Be honest here, because the whole point of the exercise is to spend your patience on cars you might actually own.
You should arrive at four or five. If you have more, your brief is too loose; go back and make it stricter. If you have fewer than three, widen the body style rather than the budget, because a large estate, a mid-size upright car and a full-size saloon can all answer the same brief in ways that feel very different from the driving seat.
Cost the ownership, not the purchase
For each remaining candidate, find the service interval and the price of a routine service, the price of a full set of tyres in the correct size, the typical insurance cost for your circumstances, and what the same car is worth on the second-hand market after a few years. These four figures are obtainable in an evening with a few telephone calls, and they will reorder your list more than any driving impression.
Tyres in particular deserve attention in this climate. Large wheels with low-profile tyres look magnificent on a stand, cost a great deal to replace, and degrade faster in heat. Where a car is offered with a choice of wheel sizes, the smaller option is almost always the better car to live with, quieter and more comfortable over broken tarmac, and materially cheaper to keep on the road.
Drive the three that survive
Now book proper test drives, and insist on a route that includes a rough surface, a stretch of motorway at cruising speed, a multi-storey car park and at least twenty minutes of continuous driving. Ask for the car to have been standing in the sun rather than idling in a cool showroom, because how quickly the cabin recovers is one of the most important things you can learn and nobody volunteers it.
Drive the three within the same week if you can. Impressions decay quickly, and comparing a car you drove in the morning with one you drove a fortnight ago is not a comparison at all. Take the same passenger on each drive and ask them the same three questions afterwards. Their answers are often clearer than yours, because they were not concentrating on the steering.
Decide slowly, buy calmly
Once the drives are done, leave it alone for a week. If one car keeps coming back to mind without effort, that is your answer. If none does, the brief was wrong and it is worth starting again rather than settling. Nobody has ever regretted taking an extra month over this decision, and a great many people have regretted signing on the afternoon of a show while still pleasantly overwhelmed.
When you do move, treat the purchase as a separate negotiation from the choice. Have the car inspected independently if it is pre-owned, read what is and is not covered, and be willing to walk away over the condition of a specific example rather than the merits of the model. The car you chose carefully deserves a purchase made just as carefully.
