Both of our cars are getting up there in years (and miles) so we are looking to replace one of them. We know we'll have to do both eventually, but don't want to be stuck with
two car payments at the same time so we are staggering the purchases. The question is, which one do we replace first?
We have:
- 2001 Honda Civic that is basically just driven around town - 110K miles - 32 MPG
- 2005 Honda Pilot that we take on long trips, so it caught up to the Civic really quickly - 115K miles - 17 MPG
Conventional wisdom would dictate selling the Civic that is 4 years older than the Pilot, but my wife (who loves her little Civic) believes that the Civic would outlast the Pilot mechanically so we should sell the Pilot while it's worth something, replace it with a crossover and keep the Civic until it dies or falls apart.
If it matters, the Civic has a door that is rusting from the bottom due to a bad scrape from long ago that I never knew about. Because of the amount and location of the rust it would probably be more cost effective at this point to just replace the entire door. Besides that issue, it's mechanically sound and the exterior is decent.
The Pilot has a small area of rust that we could take care of for a couple hundred but it's in great condition beyond that - MPG is a bitch though.
If we wanted to sell the Civic we might have a private buyer that would give us $3,000 for it. The trade-in value would probably be less than that from a dealership due to the rust and the fact that my wife had to thumbtack the headliner for it to stay up - there is a line of about 20-30 silver thumbtacks that are only visible if you look pretty hard at the car from behind. I'm not sure if there is a condition tier that involves thumbtacks, but it can't help.
What would you do in our situation?
[btw, it's sad but not at all unexpected that the '01 Civic has a KBB value of $3,200 while the '05 Pilot is only valued at $5,200.]
two car payments at the same time so we are staggering the purchases. The question is, which one do we replace first?
We have:
- 2001 Honda Civic that is basically just driven around town - 110K miles - 32 MPG
- 2005 Honda Pilot that we take on long trips, so it caught up to the Civic really quickly - 115K miles - 17 MPG
Conventional wisdom would dictate selling the Civic that is 4 years older than the Pilot, but my wife (who loves her little Civic) believes that the Civic would outlast the Pilot mechanically so we should sell the Pilot while it's worth something, replace it with a crossover and keep the Civic until it dies or falls apart.
If it matters, the Civic has a door that is rusting from the bottom due to a bad scrape from long ago that I never knew about. Because of the amount and location of the rust it would probably be more cost effective at this point to just replace the entire door. Besides that issue, it's mechanically sound and the exterior is decent.
The Pilot has a small area of rust that we could take care of for a couple hundred but it's in great condition beyond that - MPG is a bitch though.
If we wanted to sell the Civic we might have a private buyer that would give us $3,000 for it. The trade-in value would probably be less than that from a dealership due to the rust and the fact that my wife had to thumbtack the headliner for it to stay up - there is a line of about 20-30 silver thumbtacks that are only visible if you look pretty hard at the car from behind. I'm not sure if there is a condition tier that involves thumbtacks, but it can't help.
What would you do in our situation?
[btw, it's sad but not at all unexpected that the '01 Civic has a KBB value of $3,200 while the '05 Pilot is only valued at $5,200.]
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