YACT: Reliability of used cars..

[Spencer278]

Originally posted by: thomsbrain
the thing about used cars is a fair amount of stuff can break and they still come out better "investments" than a new car.

You can replace a lot of an old car for the 300 dollar a month car payment, extra tax, and higher insurance.

 

[Black88GTA]

Get any used car checked out. It's completely luck of the draw as to how the vehicle was kept up, etc.

For example, when I got my Trans Am (summer of 1999) for $4k, I quickly found out that the motor was trashed. I had to replace the engine less than a year after getting it. It runs great now, but...lesson learned.

On the other end of the stick, the TA was obviously not the car to drive in Michigan winters. So, I went to a local Chevy dealership with $200 (yes, two hundred dollars) in hand. I needed a car to last me for 3 months, at which point I was planning on getting rid of it. This was November, 2001. The salesman took me over to a row of beaters, sitting off to the side (the trade-in lot). I drove out of there in a 1992 4 cylinder Mustang for $200 out the door, taxes, title, plate, registration all included.

I later learned that this car had only 42k original miles on it - not 142k as I had thought (Carfax). After a couple relatively minor repairs (new radiator, seat track, door handle, and door needed to be re-hung - all done myself for the cost of parts, except for the door hanging) it was very serviceable. A/C was ice cold (and still is), everything works great. I ended up keeping it, and it's now at 62k miles and runs excellent. In fact, I just took it on a 1,000 mile road trip, and it never skipped a beat. Not bad for a car that cost me about $500 altogether.

Moral of this story, something could be priced way cheap and be a diamond in the rough, or priced fairly high and be a lemon. $$ is not always an indicator of what you're getting. Have a mechanic check out any car you're considering top to bottom, and run a Carfax report on it. My .02. Good luck!

 

[Ornery]

"I had to replace the engine less than a year after getting it. It runs great now, but...lesson learned."

That's insane for a car only a couple years old, but being a sports car might explain it. It wouldn't bother me too much, putting an engine in a car that was ten years old. You take your chances, but if that's the model you want, you'll have a brand new engine in it. You could expect it to last quite a while after that.

 

[Black88GTA]

Originally posted by: Ornery
"I had to replace the engine less than a year after getting it. It runs great now, but...lesson learned."

That's insane for a car only a couple years old, but being a sports car might explain it. It wouldn't bother me too much, putting an engine in a car that was ten years old. You take your chances, but if that's the model you want, you'll have a brand new engine in it. You could expect it to last quite a while after that.

Well...heh, the car was 11 years old when I got it (it's an 88 model) and had 95k on it. Cars like mine (at the time I bought it) were going for 4800-6k around here in nice shape. I figured that once I bit the bullet and put the new motor in, it would last me forever, so yeah, it didn't bother me TOO much, but it still sucked that I didn't really have the option. I would have liked to have driven it for a while and saved up a bit more for a beefed up motor, but all I could afford at the time was a stock replacement .

 

[Ornery]

Must have read too fast, because I thought you purchased a '99. I bought a '66 GTO in 1976, and I figured the engine would be due, soon. Wasn't long before it was bored to 411ci and getting me one ticket after another.

 

[Linflas]

Who Needs a Minivan when Lincoln Offers a Trunk this Big?


Truth be told, we did not expect to like this Lincoln, which obtained an unsavory nickname concocted by a groomsman. Still, after living with the Town Car for ten days, we came to appreciate the comfortable interior, the huge trunk, the V-8 power, and all the little luxury conveniences. Driving this Lincoln made us wonder how big rear-drive cars fell out of favor with the American public.

I can answer that one. It was a combination of the CAFE rules combined with the sticker shock of gasoline going very quickly from .28¢ to .55¢ a gallon. Then in 1979 they skyrocketed to $1.00 so unexpectedly that many gas stations had to rig their pumps to charge by the half gallon because there was no provision to go above .99¢. In 1974 I was driving a 1965 Dodge Polara wagon. It could seat 9 people and had a 383 V8. When fillups suddenly went from $7.00 a tank to $12.50 it was painful especially when the car got 14 MPG on the highway and 9-10 city when it was tuned up. The CAFE rules gradually made it so these large station wagons were not produced along ever more stringent safety rules requiring the use of car seats rather than using the open area in back as a play pen. That is how CHrysler hit a home run with the first mini vans. Suddenly it was possible to once again buy a car that could haul a lot of people and since it was a "truck" it did not count against CAFE.