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Car for an HS student

S

Shadow Conception

Golden Member
My dad and I are beginning to look at possibilities for the purchase of my first car. The budget is <= $5000. I'm a junior in high school. All I'm looking for is something that will get me from point A to point B. My dad's a... dad. He's looking for something in this price range that will last me until I graduate from college.

I would mainly use the car to commute to school, work (if I can get a job this summer), and leisure purposes. The colleges that I wish to go to (UVA or VA Tech 😛) are both hundreds of miles from here. The car would have to be able to withstand the trip, and then continue providing service for a while after.

Performing a couple Google searches, the biggest name seems to be the Civic (which both of my parents own, a 2006 and a 2007). My dad would prefer to get a station wagon, since they can hold great amounts of cargo, which would help me in transporting my baggage if I go far out for college. However, we're not just looking at station wagons; we're looking for the best deal.

Other costs are also important. We'd want a car that wouldn't impact us as hard as other cars on insurance, meaning sports cars are out of the question. Maintenance costs would also be important, as a car breaking down every week would be burdensome and expensive.

My main questions. Do you guys have any advice at what kinds of cars to keep an eye out for? What exactly is the deal with mileage on older cars, and at what mileage would it be bad to purchase a car that is supposed to last? What about diesel? I saw a 2006 Jetta TDI with under 100k miles for $4300 on Autotrader. And what about automatic transmission versus manual transmission? I would prefer a stick shift (unlike my dad), but I'm not really sure as to which would be better for me.

Thanks for any help you guys provide.
 
transmission is really what you like, sounds like you can do both.

my main thing for you is that to get the best bang for your buck is to avoid the common cars. IE civic and corolla. Yes they are great cars but mark ups are HIGH on them. I advise my friend who was in the same situation as you but he just gradated college, he wanted a civic and i told him to go for the accord. He told cost of a 1 year old used civic was more then a brand new accord. He got the accord since it was bigger and liked it.

Wagons aren't that bad tell you the truth. I never owned one and i was closed minded about them but now i see the uliity of them. If your father is dead on wagon and your not. the hatchback is a good middle. mazda 3 hatchbacks. is one car i would like to get or a matrix. My youngest brother is off to college this year and i'm trying to tell my dad to put him in a matrix or the equal VIBE. VIBE is a about $5000 with 100k in a 03-04 model.

Your buying a used car, it will break down. Thats a given. Some get lucky and some are unlucky thats really all that. American cars normally fall under the cheap section but are decent values.
 
Forget VW unless you want to learn first hand how to repair cars.

Go with a manual transmission, they lower the purchase price and in the cost of cars you're looking at the chances of spending money on the transmission are lower, with any expenditures being lower; they require less care and cost less to replace when they go bad.

IMO if you test drive a manual car you should do a very aggressive power shift into second when the owner isn't in the car to make sure the clutch still grabs immediately and doesn't spin out (you want the tires to chirp). Even an econobox can chirp into second.

Go with the online searches including classifieds. If you have this money up front available you can get a great car private party for $5k.

Agree with above about civic and corolla, you don't get much used because people think they are worth crazy amounts so the market is silly for them.
 
find a buick or oldsmobile LeSaber, 88, etc.. they will run for a long time, good gas mileage, hold a lot of stuff. I would go for a drive in the country, near a smaller town and look for stuff on the side of the road, usually you can find good deals on some old persons car that they have babied, and are selling because they got a new model.
 
Honda Civic. You can EASILY get a NICE and older honda civic for under $5k. You don't have to worry about the transmissions if you get a manual transmission, so any year will work.

'nuf said.
 
I am a junior in college, and have had my 1996 Accord since I was a junior in high school. (~110k miles when purchased, only put on a few thousand since). It's fantastic, extremely reliable, cheap to repair, good gas mileage, and doesn't look dated for a 14 year old car, and is very easy to drive. It was also cheap to buy -- anyway the point of this whole schpeel is you should look into an Accord 🙂
 
Really big bump, I figured I'd revive this thread instead of starting an entirely new thread.

So our budget is around $5k, including taxes and whatnot. My dad's friend suggested that we buy a $1.5k beater and then replace all the major parts that would be likely to break. So, we'd be buying a car and then replacing stuff like the transmission and whatnot - all of this being within the constraints of the $5k budget. What do you guys think?

Also, how are Saabs in general? Would a '97-'01 Saab be a good buy? What kind of car under $5k could I buy today and have it last for ~4 years?
 
I figure for a student you need to get a econobox. Just have a look on Autotrader, searching against your budget cost.

Personally, I would go with a Honda, Toyota or Nissan.
 
Shadow Conception said:
Really big bump, I figured I'd revive this thread instead of starting an entirely new thread.

So our budget is around $5k, including taxes and whatnot. My dad's friend suggested that we buy a $1.5k beater and then replace all the major parts that would be likely to break. So, we'd be buying a car and then replacing stuff like the transmission and whatnot - all of this being within the constraints of the $5k budget. What do you guys think?

Also, how are Saabs in general? Would a '97-'01 Saab be a good buy? What kind of car under $5k could I buy today and have it last for ~4 years?
Click to expand...

Replacing all the major parts that are likely to break? Figure about $20-30K to get close to the reliability of a new car. That's without doing any body work.

You can buy an older, cheaper car, and keep the rest of the budget as a repair fund. But you'd still want to avoid anything with an obvious major malfunction looming.

You can get a good car for $5k. Most $1-2k cars are really worth negative money, though you can get lucky.
 
When I was 15 my dad bought me a Suzuki Samurai for $1,300, at 20 with ZERO repairs and about 35k miles later some lady decided to rear end me on the freeway and give me a cute little dent in the back corner... With the insurance money I threw on some diamond plate over the rear corners and put a 1.6l motor in it, kept the original tranny and everything else. Last year the transmission went out, cost $300 including shop labor to get it fixed. Moral of the story, Samurai's kick ass and mine has lasted forever, I'm 25 and it still runs strong.
Isn't too expensive to insure and it gets great mileage 25-30 depending on the head-wind, lol. Aftermarket is really cheap because these days most people build 'em as crawlers so you can get a new transmission/motor or really anything for very very cheap.
 
You should be able to find an old Corolla wagon in good shape within your price range. They're boring cars to drive, but they get good mileage and tend to be reliable (as always, individual examples vary depending on how they've been treated).

Another alternative would be a first-generation Honda Odyssey (the one without sliding doors). Yes, it's a minivan, but it's small enough to get decent mileage and drive in the city while having pretty spectacular cargo space. Not only would it be easy to load up and transport your stuff to and from school, it has enough room to haul around friends easily and being the guy with a car people don't have to be shoehorned into can be kind of nice in college. Also, those first-generation Odysseys have ridiculous reliability ratings.

ZV
 
Cheap and plain.
I am so fucking tired of driving home every day past the high school and seeing Mercedes, decked out Jeeps and Escalades. Fucking ridiculous.
 
shortylickens said:
Cheap and plain.
I am so fucking tired of driving home every day past the high school and seeing Mercedes, decked out Jeeps and Escalades. Fucking ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Not really... that's where our society should be headed. Each successive generation to be more successful.
 
Shadow Conception said:
How are older Saabs? Volvos? Older as in mid to late '90s.

Also, thanks for all the advice so far. 🙂
Click to expand...

While I love my '98 Volvo, I wouldn't recommend it for a HS/College car, nor would I recommend a Saab. While both cars can be reasonably reliable, they will cost more to maintain and insure than a Japanese model of similar age they tend to have more issues with random electrical gremlins. They're more fun to drive and have nicer interiors (my opinion, others may differ), but I don't see them as great college cars unless you're talking about the 240 series Volvos, which are tanks. Ugly and slow, but tanks nontheless.

ZV
 
PhoKingGuy said:
Look for an early 2000s Ford Taurus. Should be near bulletproof and cheap as hell.
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Except the transmission, those are almost guaranteed to grenade at 100k miles.
I would look for an 05 or newer Focus. You can find them in a hatchback (or a rarer wagon) with a manual transmission easily and most should be in the 5k range or under.

They are utterly boring, but handle well and the 05+ models have a decently powerful engine in them.
 
Yea skip the civic and corolla. People think they are worth way to much for what you get.


Look for other American japanese cars. I would not get a european car as your first.

Ford Focus is good, buicks, saturns, maybe even a base model engine Mazda 3, etc... Nissan sentras use to not hold their value as well and were reliable. Not sure if that is as true anymore.
 
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