You gotta be rich to own a cheap car | Hacker News Reader

You gotta be rich to own a cheap car

thetruthaboutcars.com

149 pointspassive165 comments

I'm twice bitten, once shy on used cars.

I know plenty of people who are reasonably frugal who still go for the new car, though I think they view it as more of a slightly risk-averse heuristic than an optimal decision. I think most of them recognize that with planning, effort, and a bit (but not a ton) of luck, they probably would do better used.

The risk averse heuristic goes like this: identify a car with a reputation for value, purchase under a buyer's plan, take very good care of itfor the useful life of the car. These aren't the people who show up in a shiny new car every few years - they often keep the car for 15 years or more.

Like I said, it's a bit risk and effort averse, since with a lot of research, careful evaluation (including a mechanic inspection), and a bit of luck (more the absence of bad luck), you can definitely beat the above strategy by going used. It's a lot of effort, though. Personally, I did all the things you're supposed to do, and still ended up with lots of $$ repair bills, so I'm no longer interested in used cars. I understand that I got unlucky, but I'm just done.

I suppose I'm also particularly convinced by the argument that people generally don't sell good used cars, since I'm one of those people who hangs onto a car until it costs me more to own it than replace it.

Buying a one or two year old car is far better than buying new. The first few years of depreciation are the worst and if the car is a lemon you'll generally know in the first year.

The whole point is that this is easier said than done. Yes, cars depreciate rapidly in the first two years, which is why people who own quality non-lemons that are less the 2 years old are generally very reluctant to sell them. If you can find one, that's great, but the deprecation to me has always had more meaning as a reality check for a seller than an opportunity that can be easily obtained as a buyer. For instance, you often hear that a new car loses "10%" (probably more) of its resale value the moment you drive it off the lot. Yes, if you try to sell your car the moment you drive it off the lot, you will lose 10% or more. But go out there and try to buy a car for 90% of what someone just paid for it as they drive it off the lot!

Yes, I do not know where people imagine that this supply of 1-2 year old cars comes from. The ones that do exist are mainly from rental fleets, with 30k of miles per year. Not exactly a winner of a car there.

Most leases are 2-3 years long and are then sold as CPO. 30-40% discount is typical with extended warranty and decent financing. That's a good source of lightly used heavily depreciated well maintained cars for those lucky like us. But that's not what this article was about really.

well, 60k miles in a 2 year old car is not that much. Still lots of miles to go before you hit a million.

60k miles in 2 years is twice the avg of a work commuter in the U.S. Not that much in that theres plenty of life but it was driven a lot though and you're a lot closer to the recommended repairs

You also avoid some of the "people don't sell good cars" thing , because so many two year old cars are from people who just lease new cars every two years.

By that logic, if I know I got a lemon, I should sell it in the first year or two. Otherwise I should keep it. So most of the 1-2 year old cars on the market will be lemons, and no longer a far better deal than buying new.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

This is true in cases where the manufacturer offers 5 year warranty with option to extend. We did just this recently ourselves and bought an 18 month old car. We still have a solid 3 years of factory warranty and can extend for an additional two if we so choose.

Some manufacturers only offer 3 years though with no option to extend so the value proposition is not nearly as good IMO if you're buying a vehicle with only a year left on the warranty.

Anyone ever buy a car off a car rental place (Enterprise, Budget, etc.)? They continually buy new cars, so they always have old inventory to sell, and they keep their cars in good condition. It seems that you might avoid both lemons and the immediate deprecation that way, but have a 'almost' new car.

I bought a 2009 Toyota Corolla a few years ago from Hertz. At the time anyway, their Rent-to-Own program gave you up to 3 days to decide on whether you wanted to keep it. The no-haggle price is given to you up front. In the meantime, you were renting it at their usual rate. If you returned it in less than 2 hours, you could get the rental fees fully refunded to you. In those 3 days, you would have plenty of opportunity to have a mechanic look it over for you, and for you to drive around for awhile and see if it suits you. If it doesn't, you return it and pay the rent. If it does and you buy, the rent is waived. You receive paperwork in the mail to sign and mail back, and you must have the money wired to them.

Things worked out well for me. The Corolla was a tad scruffy but otherwise presentable, and my mechanic gave it a clean bill of health (except for two of the tires being over-worn, which Hertz replaced). It's been a while, but I remember the price being ~$11k (4dr sedan, 43k miles, about 1.5 yr old), and all said and done came to ~$12k (taxes, titles, fees, what-have-you). The car was young enough and under-mileage enough to still be under manufacturer's warranty. The Hertz warranty was 60 days.

The 3-days rent is not much risk (maybe $200) versus $500 deposit most used car dealers want. This is probably not an easy way to go if you need to do this on a car loan. But if you can raise the cash, I think this is a good way to go.

I'd personally never buy a rental (how do I know though, they get sold at the same auctions that used car dealers attend too!) cause of how I treat them, but your experience mirrors that of a coworker which was good for him as well. He bought from Enterprise.

Imagine if you went to buy a used car from Craigslist:

Q: Who drove this car?

A: Oh, whatever random people wanted to pay me money.

Q: What kind of maintenance did you do?

A: The bare minimum to get it to last a year.

Q: What options did you get?

A: The lowest ones the manufacturer would sell us.

Does that appeal?

Actually you can pretty much guarantee optimal maintenance, because all cars are on a schedule and regulated by the corporate office. Everything else is spot on. You'd be surprised about the % of used cars starting in a rental fleet, even if they aren't sold by those companies directly.

True, but on a new car with relatively low mileage, I would think maintenance is essentially oil changes and tire inflation, and maybe brakes if the car is really abused.

It's risk vs. reward, to many people the increased cost of a brand new car is worth more than the risk of buying used.

Also, if you buy a car thats 2 or 3 years old you can actually figure out what is likely to go wrong with it, something you generally don't get with new cars (unless you're buying a model is about to be refreshed)

I generally find the maintenance required to keep the warranty generally exceeds the cost of repairs that might actually happen. It's not exactly rocket science to change air filters, oil, transmission fluid, and brakes.

The other thing about cheap used cars is when they break, you get a new one. I'm not going to spend $2k on a new engine, I'm going to buy a new car for $2000-4000.

No more or less than any other used car, aside from going through a hundred owners. It's like comparing an apartment vs. a hotel room. No one I know gets freaked out over a nice hotel room.

Agreed.

And many manufacturers offer an extended warranty on used cars. Buy a 1 year old "certified" car many times has a longer warranty than an identical new car at a lower cost.

This was me a few years ago. While I could have bought used, the premium for a known history of the car was worth it since I knew I would keep it for 10+ years. You pay more to reduce some risk over the lifetime of the car.

> It's a lot of effort, though.

This x100. My wife and I recently bought a new car. We went into the process assuming that we'd buy a car that was a couple of years old. After 3 months of casual browsing and research, we bought a new car with a few modest upgrades.

We even live in a place with plentiful public transit. We've only put 4000 miles on our 10 month old car - and that's _a lot_ of driving for us.

The reason being is that we recently had our first child. We have to get him to daycare somehow before we can go to work. Any time our car is in for repairs, one of us simply stays home with him, as relying on the bus schedule to get us to an from the daycare reliably is a pain. Moreover, we're lucky we can do that on a moments notice. If we worked in jobs where we couldn't work from home, we'd be even more incentivized to buy something reliable.

We had an 14 year old car before. We got a new car specifically to avoid having to think about it. As long as we find time for a regular oil change, everything keeps running smoothly.

It's more than a financial decision even for frugal consumers. There have been some significant safety improvements in just the last two years, especially on small overlap collisions and automated front crash prevention.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List

Buying a new car makes sense IFF: 1) you don't get a luxury car. 2) you actually keep it until repairs are costing you $3000 per year. 3) you can actually buy it without doing financial harm to yourself.

There's a reason that I have always loved reading TTAC and will always continue to read it. These guys are thoughtful and interesting to a degree that is only rivalled by how insular and myopic most car people are. They taught teenaged me a lot of lessons about critical thinking by laying it on top of one of my favourite topics - cars.

Enough of a love letter - I agree with the point. There's a similar thing that happens with house owners: owning a whole bunch of tools and being able to fix your own stuff is a privilege that middle class people enjoy, but poor people do not. You have to pay for the ability to plan for contingencies, and if you can barely afford to pay for your living expenses, you definitely can't afford to pay for the $50 battery charger, or the $30 socket set, or the time and energy required to learn all this stuff in the first place and put it into action when you need it done.

It's the same with the tastefully minimalist lifestyle - being able to say "I'll just buy (another) one of those if I need it" and throwing something perfectly good out, is a privilege of the rich. It takes money to own very little.

Many cities have Tool Libraries and Lendof Libraries. They are wonderful.

Last but not least, I had the ability to just let the car sit. I didn’t need it for anything. It wasn’t the way I was going to make my rent money that month, it wasn’t the way I was going to get my child to the hospital. It was just a car that I was driving for fun. And that’s the biggest kind of Privilege! I can imagine.

Wherein we arrive at a key point of strategy in cheap vehicles.

Have two.

I spent half of college riding a pair of $500 motorcycles. On any given day there was a good chance one was broken with the engine sitting on my driveway- but I never once missed a day of class, thanks to redundancy.

Of course that did mean I had to invest $1,000 into vehicles instead of $500. Privilege!, I suppose, but a smaller one.

Bonus: the second vehicle takes you to Autozone when you are halfway through a rebuild on the first and discover you are missing your 12mm socket and six bolts

Many parts stores deliver, fwiw.

I got a part in 20 minutes this past weekend for no upcharge, delivered to my house. And I didn't need it--my car was operable. Just a heater control valve.

Same here. I owned two cars for a while with the same philosophy. Insurance was actually cheaper with two cars instead of one so it saved me money.

This was a fun read and I can relate, I own a Toyota with over 300k km's on the clock. At 160k the timing belt snapped and bent the valves. Luckily I could afford to take a week off, buy a second hand imported enjin, have a dad who is a mechanical engineer, and learn swap the enjin myself. Then take a second week off work because the new enjin had timing issues which I finally pinpointed to a pirated camshaft pulley where the outer ring of the part would slip.

Long story short, my car, even with all the troubles is by far cheaper than any other option, but just like the article states, you have to have certain "privileges" to make it work.

For the last 15 or so years, until about a month ago, my daily driver was a 1986 sports car. There's no way I would have been able to do that if I couldn't do most of the maintenance myself or had a job where I'd be fired if I couldn't get to the office on time once in a while. Having AAA helps too, for tows.

Could the timing belt issue have been avoided if it was replaced? Or would you say it was something else that caused it to break, and would have happened regardless?

Timing belts are 100-120k mile maintenance parts depending on the vehicle. Expect bent valves if you don't replace them at the recommended interval. My car is on it's third.

So if you were to replace them at the 80% mark of those miles... Then you should be very unlikely to have them snap on you unexpectedly?

No it doesn't work like that, statistics etc. As with any fixed interval maintenance part there is some chance that the part can fail before being serviced. As per my example, the timing belt was replaced at 100k, so the new belt failed at 60k, just bad luck.

Fixed interval maintenance is used for parts with a tight normal distribution when failure occurs and where you can't predict the failure before hand, or it is difficult to measure / predict. Timing belts fits this use case.

"Cheaper" is relative. Perhaps two weeks off could be spent on traveling or exploring nature. Instead you spent that time working on a car.

Perhaps, but I don't consider that time a loss. Rather I got some very good practice on my mechanical skills which is re-used in other areas like another poster here mentioning house maintenance etc.

that seems very expensive if you weren't getting paid for the off-work days. I've never heard of a car repair costing me the equivalent of 2 weeks off work. I take it you also enjoyed some of those days so it wasn't completely sunk into working on timing issues, that's not what I would do.

I'm not so sure, the quotes I got to redo the head was about the same as about one week of pay for me. Remember this was when I was just out of college, employed for less than a year. Today I would pay someone to fix it for me.

So yes I lost about a weeks pay due to unforseen circumstances, but probably the shop would have suffered the same troubles, raising the cost, and I got to learn quite a lot about enjins etc.

The timing belt is supposed to be replaced with service at 120k.

It was, it was the second belt that snapped.

Meh. Older luxury cars can be great cheap cars for the kids, as long as you avoid extreme high mileage, known expensive parts issues, and dubious service records. CARFAX is useful: You get to see service records. I would pick a 10-15 year old Benz with 100k miles (where the prices come down quickly) that's been dealer-serviced, over a Subaru or Volvo. Any decent car should go 200k miles before it becomes a money sink, and Lexus, BMW, and Benz engines should run to 300k miles before anything expensive wears out. Automatic transmissions and rev-limiters make it hard to destroy an engine through abuse. Non-turbo 6 and 8 cylinder luxury car engines have led an easy life.

The cars they are talking about are either semi-exotic high performance models that probably have been whipped, or super-high-mileage. That's called having a hobby.

Used German cars are among the biggest money sinks on the planet aside from unaffordable exotics. Out of dozens of friends and dozens and dozens of Euro cars, not a single person has had an inexpensive to repair or own BMW/Mercedes/Audi/SAAB...new or used. And these are cared for vehicles, not rolling wrecks or the result of careless owners.

My 95k Ford had 1 repair in the years that I owned it (a rarity for Ford)...a thermostat. My 70k miles Honda has had $0 in repairs since 2006.

German luxury cars only make sense if leased from new (which 70% of them are). Used? Run far away, and run fast.

You can make it a good value if you are a diehard car hobbyist, but I concede that this is not most people.

I am still holding onto a 21 year old mid-luxury BMW. I have spent countless hours working on it and probably have $2000 in parts in it (I have owned it for 9 years.) I am grateful that I have the free time, collection of tools and documentation, know some tricks about buying parts, and can figure out machines. I feel that I have obtained a great value considering what it will cost to get a newer car, in similar state of repair, that gives a similar experience driving. I would not enjoy most other car makes.

People buy these German cars for some reason, and the reason is not ever to have a maintenance free automobile, or to never spend time or money fixing the car. You are going to expend some resources one way or another, but it does not have to be mostly money.

I've owned several fords that all held up well:

1989 Ford Taurus: $450 car, required new battery terminals. Totaled it out fairly quickly--side note: head on collision at approx 45mph with no seat belt, walked away with scratches. Given 3300 by insurance people for the car only.

199X Ford Escort Hatchback: $500 car, zero maintenance over a couple of years. Eventually started stalling in neutral unless you revved it, I sold it to my sister for $200 and bought something else. Vaccuum hose had a hole, $4 fix.

1987 Ford Mustang: $3500 car, required a clutch immediately for $800. Drove for several years with no further mechanical problems (though it did have body issues), sold it for $2250. The decrease in value was almost wholly my own fault in causing & then neglecting the body issues.

I had one lemon, but not a Ford. A 199x Pontiac Grand Am. $850 car, immediately needed tires & a water pump (making it a $1200 car). Broke down approximately 15 times for various reasons, mostly small problems or problems I learned to live with. I eventually got a noticed it would be towed if not moved from where I had it parked, and I decided it was prudent to let it be towed.

Otherwise:

1996 Nissan Pickup: $3k car in 2009, still own it, has had zero repairs. Several things have failed: A/C, both front blinkers fell out of the truck, someone backed into the front bumper and misaligned the headlights, broken into & stereo & speakers stolen. Engine is otherwise perfect, though. I'm trying to sell it now, as I bought a Jeep Cherokee about a month ago. I would be incredibly surprised if I can't get $1500 for it, but I have someone coming to look this weekend at $2400 asking price.

Maybe I've been lucky, but the total amount of repair fees I've paid over all of these, including the lemon, is somewhere around $3k I'd guess, vehicles overall costing me a couple thousand for the last 15 years of vehicles, usually with redundancy by owning 2 at a time. I own a motorcycle now, as well, so I have three levels. I did the easiest repairs myself. If I couldn't learn it in 20 minutes on youtube, I paid someone else.

that hasn't been my experience, I drive a '99 benz station wagon with 140K miles that I have had for 4 years. It's only required routine maintenance tasks such as filters, belts, brake pads/rotors, tran fluid, tires, engine sensors and oil changes.

I will NEVER buy a new car ever again. When I was young, dumb and still in college I bought a '99 Mercury Cougar off the lot and it was constant problems from day one and completely unusable at 80k miles.

I disagree completely. I just sacked my favorite car of all time (2001 BMW 740i) because maintenance was becoming too much for what I was willing to pay (2k-3k a year). I had it 4 years and it had 120k miles when I sold it.

Same goes for my 1995 BMW 530i. At the time, my mechanic even told me that it was probably time for another car (and it only had 140k on it).

Some models, or years, are just trouble. Mercedes made a wiring harness with insulation that did not have an acceptable lifespan and if it goes bad, you can't afford to replace it: http://repairpal.com/insulation-degrades-on-engine-wiring-ha... BMW plastic radiators have a bad rep.

I come from a poor family, and I'm no rich guy now. My family has always owned used cars. My current used car has saved me a ton of money, and as long as I maintain it, it will last a very long time. And by no means am I some great mechanic. I know how to change the filters, I get jiffy lube to change my oil, and thats it.

So buying a used car can make a lot of sense. Of course, I'm not buying a used Maserati. That's just stupid.

He didn't write about buying used card. In fact, he even made a point about buying not-that-old Civics, because there is no risk to owning a used Civic. But changing your oil and filters won't help you when the CV joint snaps going down the road (and it's going to happen someday), or when the alternator seizes up, or when the starter won't turn over, or when the timing belt snaps without warning.

All of those things can happen on an older vehicle without a moment's notice, and besides the timing belt, none of them are commonly found on a scheduled maintenance calendar. Changing your oil only helps until that odometer rolls over 250k (for a reliable car) or even 90k (for a cheap econobox).

The point isn't "don't buy a used car", it's "don't listen to articles saying you should buy a car with a million miles for $1000".

CV joints 'snap' when they have been left without lube or have been driven way past their lifespan (normally the life of the vehicle but for smaller cars they are fragile enough that it is not rare to see them go).

One major reason for CV joint problems is the CV joint boot tearing allowing road grime in and grease out of the joint (they warm up enough that the lube becomes fluid and of course there is all the swirling which will happily empty a fully greased up CV joint in a few hundred kilometers). So you inspect those periodically and replace them when they have a large enough number of miles on them. Maintenance is everything with things that you use every day and that you depend on. It's like technical debt in software: you can ignore it for a bit but then you end up paying double or worse.

A CV joint is a wear part itself too, so if it has done its duty you replace it. (Not all that hard, but definitely not 'can barely replace a tire' territory.)

I looked at the manual on my Fiat and my Silverado, neither of them recommend checking the CV boot for damage as part of routine maintenance. And I say that with 90% certainty that the CV joint on my Silverado (357,000 miles) is about to fail with the boot still intact. I can't come up with any other reason why the passenger side wheel has an inch or so of play side to side when it's jacked up, or why it clunks when I turn left. From the outside, the boot is in perfect shape.

(for those commenting on the CV joint thing, this is what I was told by two licensed mechanics after they had inspected it. Thank you for prompting me to get another opinion though).

Everything in your car, you can say "if it has done its duty, you replace it". Sometimes that includes the entire car. That Silverado is still on it's original engine. Has that done it's duty? How would I know when I should replace the engine? The frame also has 357k miles on it. I know from inspecting it that it's rotted in certain spots. Has it done its duty?

You and I know how to inspect various parts of the car to see how much wear they have. Not everyone can. A CV joint might clunk or grind before it fails. A timing belt won't give you that luxury.

neither of them recommend checking the CV boot for damage

It's common knowledge, part of the most basic examination of a car. It's on par with noticing a crack in your sidewall or a badly frayed brake line.

I can't come up with any other reason why the passenger side wheel has an inch or so of play side to side when it's jacked up, or why it clunks when I turn left.

OH MY GOD. I created an account solely to comment on this.

CV joints have NOTHING to do with retaining the wheel, holding it in position, or anything else of the sort. NOTHING.

Your ball joints are shot (and/or your hub). If you're driving that vehicle, YOU ARE RECKLESSLY ENDANGERING YOURSELF. Pardon the caps, but seriously, you appear to be unaware of the danger you're creating for yourself and others.

A timing belt won't give you that luxury.

I don't know why you're going back to timing belts, as they are scheduled replacement items.

A CV joint ideally does not transmit any force other than torque on the axle, if there is a lot of play in the wheel from side to side you really need to replace that ball joint or control arm or whatever suspension component is broken. Your car is currently dangerous to drive, if that joint fails completely at speed you will lose all control over the orientation of that wheel and there's a good chance it will want to immediately turn sideways. If the side to side play is at the 3 and 9 o'clock position then your tie rod end has failed, if it's at the 12 and 6 o'clock position then it's probably a ball joint.

But back to the topic at hand, every repair manual I have seen has listed inspecting CV joint boots for tears every so often.

It's interesting that you say that, I've actually had it at two mechanics to get their opinion. I bought it about 400 miles from where I live, so I had to drive it back. I wanted to make sure it was safe to make the drive. Both of them said "it's the CV joint, but as long as it's not in 4WD, you're fine". When I jack it up, I can move the top of the wheel side to side like wiggling a loose tooth. So on that judgment, I drove it 400 miles clunking along.

But back to the topic at hand, repair manuals are different from the manual you get included with the car.

You're making the mistake of assuming that CV joints are 'customer inspectable', they are not, but the garage has it in their maintenance schedule (including scheduled replacements), so as long as you want the car to pass 'MOT' or whatever it is called or if it is still in scheduled maintenance with a dealer they'll be taken care of every so often and inspected at least once every year.

That doesn't mean you can't do it yourself, just that that is not usual.

You likely have dangerously worn out wheel bearings for the wheel to have that much play in it.

I don't use that word lightly, the wheel is going to eventually detach from the vehicle, quite possibly when travelling quickly or making a turn.

It's a bit more complex than checking tires or windshield wipers for wear.

http://www.wikihow.com/Check-the-Constant-Velocity-Boots-%28...

Your CV joint is quite possibly fine (though it might be shot, only way to be sure is to lock one side and then to try to move the other along all axis of freedom and restraint to check for play) but you're on the edge of either an accident or a catastrophic breakdown, visit a garage with someone who actually knows what he's doing before you find out which of the two options makes your lucky day.

Timing belts are wear parts to be replaced at fairly exact mileages whether or not there is visible damage or not does not factor into it. Some cars have chain drives (Mercedes for instance, and almost all big trucks) which are installed for the life of the engine.

I don't particularly care what your 'licensed mechanics' have told you, if you have an inch of play it could be any one of the following:

- worn splines on the diff

- shaft retainers about to go

- bearing housing worn out / bearings shot

- ball joints worn

- carrier arm support bushing gone or badly worn

It could also be a combination of the above with marginal parts and then all the bits of play adding up.

It's your life, not mine but I would take anything that has to do with the front-end very seriously. You don't always get to do a do-over after you've learned your lesson, and an inch of play is something to stop driving your car over until it is fixed.

FWIW when I was poor (which wasn't all that long ago, but that's a totally different story) I drove a 500 euro VW golf, I clocked 50K on it in one year which is a fair bit of driving for NL and I did the maintenance myself. I would never ever think of getting into that car of yours without making a beeline for a place with a bridge and a budget large enough to get it fixed, you're endangering those on the road that do take good care of their cars as well.

I realize that car mechanics is not your forte but please take this serious and get it taken care of before something really bad happens. If you were living within a few hundred K of here I'd be happy to toss my tools in the car and drive over to get your problem fixed, that's how serious I'd take this but since you're on the other side of an ocean that isn't going to happen.

As for 'licensed mechanics', one day on a Jeep I owned there was a mis-alignment left front, I ended up with the local alignment gurus who said I just had to live with the mis-alignment because they couldn't fix it. After asking for permission I was in the pit in a heartbeat inspecting the front end with their very nice light setup and found a hairline crack in the front diff, which is why they couldn't align that wheel (it could basically freely move backwards and forwards in the diff, a mm there translated to 1/2" at the wheel). That would have killed me handily if it had seized up at highway speeds, the diff was entirely dry.

They were extremely apologetic that they missed that, which is nice but that was a major error on their part. To me if the car is out of alignment or there is something fishy with the front end you keep at it until it is a 'known quantity' and you really know what you're doing or until it is repaired. It's way too easy to have a major accident that way.

Sure but you can easily get a late nineties Torus with 150K for $2000. These easily go twice that many miles while there are later makes that fail much more quickly.

One reason to buy an older used model is that by that time, their average durability has been established. If you buy a brand-new car, you are buying a car whose long-term prospects have only been simulated.

Sure, a new car will have longer expected miles than a used car (and you'll premium pay for that). Your chance of a lemon-experience may be "low-ish" but it may still be higher than the chance of full breakdown with a model that's established its durability.

By far the best way to get a reliable used car is to buy a new car and take care of it for 5 years. Purchase price isn't much over the life of a car, if you keep the car 10+ years.

A gently used, inspected and certified Civic costs as much as a new. Efficient markets and transaction costs.

I read the article. He mentioned the civic thing once, and didn't explicitly recommend buying used civics. It wasn't mentioned in the title either. So I wanted to comment here, just in case anyone got the wrong idea that used cars are expensive.

I grew up middle class, and statistically I'm upper-middle-class now. The closest I've got to a new car was when I got together with my wife, who had just purchased one.

Currently, we operate two cheap vehicles, less than $10k between them. But I work from home, and my wife is part-time, so we don't put a lot of load on them. We also can easily handle one of them breaking down, both financially and from a scheduling perspective. I have the time to change a flat if needed.

Used cars make sense for me, but I'm definitely privileged in many of the ways Jack describes in the article.

Just bought my first new car in November. I tried really hard to get a used car, but honestly, it just didn't make any sense -- the cost of financing was much higher, and the cost of the vehicle itself was nearly as much as a brand new model year (this was the case for both the '15 Toyota Corolla and '15 Honda Civic, and their '11 to '13 model year used counterparts.) This doesn't even touch on how difficult it was to find a decent used car in the first place.

I guess if you're comfortable with dropping $10k in cash for a decent used car, then you'd save money, but when/if you can finance a new car for very low interest rates, why tie up your liquid cash like that?

> For those families, a new-car payment is a burden — but it’s one they can predict and live with. It sucks to “throw away” $300 or $400 every month, but it’s never a surprise and in exchange they have freedom from surprises.

How exactly is paying $300-$400 monthly for a new car "throw away" money? It's going towards the ownership of a useful piece of property. Maybe the author is talking about leasing? I don't know.

>> How exactly is paying $300-$400 monthly for a new car "throw away" money? It's going towards the ownership of a useful piece of property. Maybe the author is talking about leasing? I don't know.

He's talking about the difference between that monthly payment and paying cash for cheap used car and not having the payment. If you spend $2000 on a crappy car that you maintain yourself, that monthly payment seems like throwing money away. The whole point of the piece is that's not even close to the whole story.

Because for some families those $3-400 could be better spent elsewhere so putting it towards a nice new car might seem like a waste, hence the air quotes.

Low interest rates on new cars are a smoke and mirrors game. If you weren't getting low interest rates, you'd be getting a better cash price. I bought a used car earlier this year and financed it at 3%. I'll pay around $1500 in interest. I save several times that in depreciation, and even new with 0% interest, the price still would have been close to that $1500 more.

Also, the decision isn't necessarily between brand new car and a 10k used car. If you're buying a two or three year-old car, it's probably over 10k.

> If you weren't getting low interest rates, you'd be getting a better cash price.

Not necessarily. If dealers get a kickback on the financing, they can actually charge less for a financed car then a cash one.

That can be true, but if you're not getting a subsidized interest rate, the difference in interest you'll pay on a new car vs. a used car isn't big at all. Not enough to make up for depreciation.

This is also a good tip -- if you go into buying a new or used car with financing lined up, you can tell the dealer that, but tell them you'll go with them if they can give you a similar rate because you might get a better price.

Not if the interest rate is low.

This lead me to:

http://www.fancyparking.com/

Is it just pictures of people who backed into a parking spot? The gallery requires Flash, so I haven't seen it.

There are actually some places around here that have signs explicitly disallowing backing into a parking space for one reason or another. Anyway, I was taught in drivers training (in the US) that if you are able to pull through a parking space so the front of your car is parked towards the road, you should. Not sure how common that message is.

> I was taught in drivers training (in the US) that if you are able to pull through a parking space so the front of your car is parked towards the road, you should.

My girlfriend and I call that "pulling through" and fist-bump with excitement when we can pull through a parking spot into another so the car's front faces the path of travel eliminating the need to back out. (Almost all parking by us is parallel parking on the street, so it isn't often.)

When I was in driver's training, the instructor (and the book) called it "the ideal parking spot".

I do this everytime. It's easy but I often mess it up so my car is too far on the left.

I worked on farms as a kid. We expressly didn't allow backing up in farm trucks. To the point where that part of the transmission was removed on most big farm trucks and we were told to park in a way that allowed only going forward. Pretty easy when you spend most of your time parking in giant fields, but even now in my city life I try to avoid the risk of driving backwards.

I generally prefer to either "pull through" into a spot so that I can "leave forward" or, if the lot is full enough, back into a spot... logic being that I either have to back in to the spot or out of the spot, and backing into the spot is slightly more controlled (given the minimal foot traffic into a spot) compared to the challenge of backing out of a spot into the lanes where people/children/etc are walking.

I can't imagine a reason you wouldn't be able to do the same in a farm truck, except for the sometimes when it's towing something. Care to expound?

Sure, in the parking lot, you are choosing between backing in or backing out. I find backing in to be the better option for two reasons. The first being that you can drive by and see who/what is in the spot. Second, like you said, the access to the spot is better controlled.

In the farm case, you can always drive forward. It was part of the engineering of the workflow for that operation; for every operation, there is a forward path to completion. You don't have to chose between anything, you just have to know that you can't drive backwards.

Comparing the risk of parking a car backward into a parking spot and backing a large truck with no rear windows is apples to oranges. But if we must compare, the risk of damage is much higher with a truck that can back over a small car with little effort, when you are in the middle of a field you don't expect anyone to be there, like in a parking lot. But people do drive out into the middle of a field in a little pickup to deliver that case of oil or a sandwich or fuel up your truck or combine. (Sidebar, it's not uncommon to bring a fuel truck along side another truck or machinery and fuel it in motion). During harvest, the work day is usually 16+ hours which doesn't include breakfast or dinner and from the start of harvest to the end there are no days off unless it's raining. Add to that that driving in circles for 16 hours a day is a very boring job. Also note that many old grain trucks have poor breaks or breaks that are overloaded when filled. Needing to drive backwards implies that you've pulled the nose of the truck into something of value then used your breaks to stop before you hit it. Given all that and the space that you find around most farms, why would you risk driving backwards?

"No rear windows" is the thing I was missing.

Thanks for the explanation.

Wait, I wasn't taught this, and my family takes pride in backing into our driveway (which is narrow and difficult to back out of).

Why is backing up bad for your car?

I've never heard that backing up is bad for your car. I guess it could be bad for your car if you back up and hit something. I'm not sure why the places near me disallow backing into parking spaces, but people still do it.

> Is it just pictures of people who backed into a parking spot?

It... appears to be. I don't understand how that's fancy in any way, but there it is.

I found this piece to be pretty much garbage. OMG only rich people can get a ride from their wife!!!!

The article should have been: You gotta be a mechanic to own a cheap luxury/sports car.

It was more than just "being a mechanic".

It's

  * being a mechanic (so you don't have to pay $500 for a $200 job).  
  * having a job with flexible hours (This happens on the way to McJob and your late? McBye Bye.)   
  * having someone else dependable with a flexible job (Friday night and everyone know you know is working at McJobs?)
  * having someone to take care of your kids so the kid is at home/daycare/babysitters and not freezing in your car 
  * having spare money so the choice isn't food vs radiator
  * being able to easily adjust to different circumstances.

Not everyone can lose a car and adjust with minimal effort. car breaks down and you expect McJob holder to be able to afford another car? thousand(s) for fix? downpayment on a replacment in short order?

All of this revolves around the fact that he's in a good place, and able to count his blessings. If all you got out of this is "you gotta be a mechanic" then you need to re-read it.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

"This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.” - Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms: The Play http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

I'll second that in a heartbeat.

I have a good friend that always struggled with money - rent, food, you name it... yet somehow has an expensive car with expensive insurance. He makes 1/2 what I do (or less) yet somehow drives a car worth 2/3x more than what I drive (just got a new used 2011 Honda Civic).

Generally you become, and stay, a millionaire by saving money. It's why so many people can win Millions in the Lottery and be broke a few years later. Getting money is only the first part. The second part is keeping it.

Even saving a lot, not everyone has sufficient income for that in a first place (even considering saving for a long time).

I have a pithier version: Being poor is really fucking expensive.

But yeah, the guy's problem isn't that he bought a used car. It's that he bought a used luxury car. They're not exactly designed for reliability or easy repair.

Can't reply to neckro23, and I don't know why. But he made a comment that the problem with the article is they bought a used luxury car not designed for repair. My question: Are ANY new cars designed to be easy to repair? while my old Bronco isn't the easiest to work on, it is much more "mechanical" in nature, with lots of room in the engine compartment and under the body to do work. I wonder what it's like to do non-trivial repairs on a 2015 F-150.

I have a buddy with a late 2000's F350. The head gaskets blew and the first step of the repairs was "Remove the body from the frame." Not something I'd like to try.

This is a good point, and why it usually be framed in a different way, that some people get rich by being very value-oriented. It's about getting the best bang for the buck.

I love that. I also love that when he finally gets expensive boots, he hates them because he can't tell what street he's on in the dark anymore.

Poor people do this all already, just with beater Fords and Chevys instead of old ass Mercedes. And instead of fixing it themselves they just pay someone, which makes it even harder.

The Mcjob holder gets a ride, runs the risk of their kid getting cold, makes the choice between food and fixing their car.

They already do this.

You have to be good at repairing cars, but probably not an actual mechanic. An actual mechanic may not make enough to afford the parts.

I had a truck that was less than reliable in the past. I had all the know-how and tools to fix everything myself, and even had the money to buy the parts. But I shed a single tear and then traded it in for a newer, more reliable car because, while I was making good money, I had been sitting in my driveway at 8:05am still trying to crank the engine over a few times too many. My boss wanted me there at 8, not 9:15 when I was able to get a ride from someone else.

And that's half the point of the article. If your job demands you be there on time, you can't own a clunker even if you can afford to fix it and know how to fix it.

My personal solution has been to own two clunkers, but my wife says it's a personal sickness on my part (I like clunkers).

I blame the fact that while I am not personally a redneck, I am descended from a very long line of rednecks and can't remember a time when we didn't own at least one car that didn't run.

And that's not even counting the beloved "donor" cars. :-)

Just think of it as "cloud transporting". One automobile instance goes down, fail back to another. You could start a new business like... maybe EngineYard? :)

That is almost exactly how I view it. I can buy two super cheap cars for less than one very reliable one, and when it's something that I can't fix cheaply or quickly enough I sell off the car and go buy another.

I also stick to the one pay check rule for cars, in that no car I buy should cost more than one paycheck, although I did make an exception for the van we use to haul the younguns around in.

You not only have HA cluster, you can also do some load-balancing - this way you have two cars with 30k miles on each instead of just one car with 60k :) Just basic math - which one setup will depreciate faster?

Ha, for a Minute I forgot that I was on HN.

My solution was to buy another clunker when I was in the financial position to be able to afford having two cars. It hasn't stopped running yet, the real challenge will be convincing the wife to let me keep it after it does stop running.

There's something relaxing about spending a weekend under a truck, putting it all back together, and driving it around knowing it's only alive because you saved it.

As long as one (or more) of those clunkers isn't hiding under un-mowed grass and surrounded by broken garden gnomes :)

> An actual mechanic may not make enough to afford the parts.

What? You realize mechanics can make good money right? Most shops charge $100+/h.

What shops charge and what mechanics get is two different things. My company charges $100+/h for my time, but I make far less than that.

Two friends who work as mechanics make $20/hr (senior-level) and $8/hr (junior level). Mechanics can make good money, just like programmers can make good money. But there are an awful lot of programmers out there making comparatively nothing.

Not to mention there's a huge difference between a used car with 890k! miles vs. a used car with closer to 70-100k miles. Sure that Lexus is a well built Toyota with good reliability, but at that mileage you're going to be expecting things to break. On the other hand if you get a less than 10 year old car with under 100k miles, unless it's known to have major issues, you shouldn't have nearly the amount of problems.

I did not get that from the article at all. Just that there are certain costs to owning a used car that you don't usually incur when owning a new one.

I thought the author was acknowledging that he was better equipped to deal with those costs than someone else might be in a different life situation. And for those other people, it might actually make more sense for them to own a newer car even if it might appear at first blush that they were being less responsible with their money than we might think they should be.

In other words, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

I thought the author was trying to ingratiate himself with people who use "privilege" as if it were an actually smart thing to say, even though he mocks those same people ("Normally I consider the use of the word 'privilege' in a conversation to be the brilliant peacock plumage that identifies a third-rate pseudo-intellectual from ten paces away").

The article needs a new title. "You gotta be rich to own a car with almost a million miles on it" would be much better. Of course, this is a pretty obvious thing to say, so it probably wouldn't get as many clicks. But at least it would be honest.

It makes no sense to talk about costs of "owning a used car." The costs involved in owning a two-year-old midrange Toyota with 20,000 miles on it are completely different from the costs involved in owning an ancient luxury car that's driven the equivalent of to the Moon and back twice.

Buying a Lexus with 900,000 miles on it is so unusual that there's no way to generalize the story beyond it.

I'm not sure what it read when you wrote this comment, but it currently reads "to own a cheap car." Used is implied, certainly, but I don't think "barely used" is part of it.

Basically, a two-year-old Toyota with 20k miles doesn't qualify.

Which "it"? The comment I'm replying to says, "Just that there are certain costs to owning a used car that you don't usually incur when owning a new one."

In any case, there's a wide universe of cheap cars (and what exactly is the threshold for "cheap" anyway?) just as there is a wide universe of used cars.

First, if you have no mechanical inclination and don't have mechanical friends, then used cars are problematic. Although you probably be in worse shape buying a new car also. The second problem now is an awfully lot of used cars and used car parts got trashed by the "cash for clunkers" program. I can think of few worse government programs to put the boot to working folks then that program.

Its all risk management. Not much different from the buy vs build in computing. Sadly, mechanical training is a dying skill and the risk is much higher.

My co-worker just bought a used Subaru for $1,000 and other than needing a belt replacement ($60 and about a hour of time), it was in really good shape. He knows how to look at a car, so all good.

Always, always, check the timing belt (or chain) and oil pump on old vehicles. That repair will kill you.

I don't understand how someone can drive but not know basic car maintenance, especially if you can only afford an older used car and depend on it.

I don't mean everyone should know how to replace a clutch but you should know the basic wear components (filters, belts, lights, brakes, etc) and how to diagnose and replace them. On most cars these are fairly simple (except on some newer cars that make them overly complex).

This is a rule I feel should be applied to your entire life. At a bare minimum you should understand the basics about things you use on a daily basis. Computers, cars, homes, etc.

> I don't mean everyone should know how to replace a clutch but you should know the basic wear components (filters, belts, lights, brakes, etc) and how to diagnose and replace them.

F..k Renault. Lights on these (especially Laguna front lights) tend to be an adventure to replace. Or every car with the high-voltage Xenon gas lamps.

I was pretty happy with my VW T4, I could tear that car down and reassemble without any problem. With modern cars, filled with dozens of computers, not so. And to make things worse, once one of the computers or sensors breaks or has issues, you'll need OBD diagnosis computers or even specialized computers to diagnose the problem or repair it.

That's stuff for expensive maintenance shops, while I just needed a small garage and a couple of basic tools for the T4 (okay, and a motor crane for lifting out the engine).

Yup, that's why I said except on some newer cars. Headlights were what I was thinking about too. Even some non-HID headlights have become a real pain to replace.

The problem with the headlights is crash resistance.

Old(er) cars had plenty of space available in the engine room because the "air" was used to absorb impact in crash situations.

New materials/manufacturing processes allow for entire removal of "dead space", with more and more components for "luxury" stuff (luxury compared with an old car, like all-side radar, active parking assistants, multi-zone AC,...) squeezed in every cubic centimetre of the car.

And so, no more space is left for your hands when you try to replace a f...ing 4mm wide lamp. Unless you disassemble the container for the window washing fluid, unmount the brake fluid container and bend two multi-wires (Renault Laguna, right-front lamp assembly).

I agree, I say so often that people depend so much on things in life that they don't know the first thing about.

But then again, it's that the point of our educational system, to teach us these things? One month of basic auto repair in high school is more useful to more people than trig.

I work with people, many of them lawyers or para-professionals, who don't know much about the cars they drive to work, the computers on their desk, the boiler in their home, etc. ... and it bothers them! Luckily, they can all pay someone else to take care of these things for them, but there are others who are just as in-the-dark but can't as easily afford it.

I think it's a failing of our education system.

I don't understand how someone can drive but not know basic car maintenance

It's easy.

Did the car start? If yes, drive it. If no, take (tow) it to get fixed.

Is the car making funny noises or is some form of warning light popping up? If no, drive it. If yes, take it to get fixed.

Does the car need an inspection? If no, drive it. If yes, take it to get inspected.

Is the car due for an oil change? If no, drive it. If yes, take it somewhere to get the oil changed.

  > Always, always, check the timing belt (or chain) and oil pump on old vehicles.

How? I'm assuming you mean when evaluating a used car to buy. Do I say "I need to have my mechanic check this...", or is there some kind of car-health certification I should be lookinf for? I wouldn't even know what to look for if checking under the hood myself.

That's were the mechanic friend comes in :)

They should have some sort of maintenance log or shouldn't be offended if you want a mechanic to check it before you buy. If it has over 60,000 miles it better have been inspected and at about 90,000 miles it should have been replaced. This varies by car.

A car with an Interference engine will blow up if that belt breaks. Engine replacements are not cheap.

A good hint on how things are, open hood, look at belt (this is not the timing belt). Does it have pits? Does it look really worn? If it is, I would make a bet that proper maintenance isn't being done. It is slightly harder than basic fluid maintenance.

If you're uncomfortable with all of that, then buy a certified pre-owned from a decent dealer.

Or just pay your mechanic to change that freaking belt so you don't have to guess if it's worn out or not.

Why buy a car that hasn't been maintained? The difference in cost between and inspection and replacement is not chump change.

Sometimes mechanics will write the date they changed the belt on the cover. Other times you have to look for tool marks on the timing belt cover and/or crankshaft pulley. But the best way is to have paperwork showing it's been done. If none of the above are definitive, go ahead and pay to have it done - it'll be far cheaper than if the belt breaks.

This is a bit too black and white.

The numerous Spanish-speaking men I saw at Autozone at around 10pm on Arizona (the only place I've lived where parts stores were open until 11pm) were good counterpoints[1].

The reality is that it comes down to some combination of know-how, discipline (nobody wants to change an alternator at midnight), resourcefulness, and innumerable other factors. The example in the article -- a failing radiator -- has workarounds that would allow someone to nurse it to and from work. An overworked, single mother of three is pretty unlikely to know the workaround.

That said, by all means, buy the newest car you can afford, unless you're specifically seeking a challenge.

[1] I noticed that, somewhat ironically, the people in the poorer neighborhoods around Phoenix had the 'privilege' of more parts stores open later.

You also have to amortize tools over multiple cars.

Spending $300 - $400 dollars a month with the idea that you wont have surprises in terms of your 'brand new' transportation is a fallacy. I've seen new cars back in the dealership often times more frequently than used cars with 100k on the clock. Although you may not have to 'pay' for the repairs it is still the inconvenience that you'll have associated with a rental car and the time lost.

As another commenter pointed out, these guys posses a skill, it's not just about free time. And the skill can be acquired or bought just like most other skills. Some basic education on how to buy a used car and what to look for can save you big $$$, I wrote about how I pick up sub $5000 cars and why financially it almost never makes sense to buy a new car here: http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurmobile/

Most cars have a sweet spot in terms of maintenance cost and depreciation. You don't have to go down to the $5000 if you aren't comfortable there. Problem is however that comfort for most uneducated used car buyers is relative and mostly not related to the actual condition of the vehicle. Most people think newer is more reliable. While in many instances that can be the case, IMO it certainly doesn't justify the price that comes with it.

For many buyers a good window to consider is 2-6 years old. The vehicle will still be going through it's depreciation cycle (so you will be paying for that) but will generally have somewhere between 20-100k miles on it. In most modern vehicles you probably won't have to repair anything major during a 2-4 year ownership period depending on where your car is in the cycle.

It's a good idea to have an ownership timeline for your purchase. I personally like to drive something different every year or two. I know most people like to set it and forget it. Either way, having a plan for ownership length is an important part of the equation and can help you to factor depreciation and mitigating risk.

Finally. The Japanese and Germans still build the best vehicles unless you want a truck. It's very unpatriotic but save yourself the headache and don't buy an american car. It's really easy to try and argue this one until you try and remember the last time you saw a mid- nineties Ford Taurus on the road. Same can't be said for a Civic.. The resale prices will corroborate here as well, you may be tempted to jump into a $6000 2008 Chevy Malibu... it's a trap! Poor build quality and low resale potential make these very bad choices.

I know a number of friends who hear the sticker price and think my decision to acquire a Nissan LEAF electric car is an expensive and ridiculous luxury. They're both wrong and right for the same reasons the OP's friend is wrong and right.

At the time I bought my car, one study had shown the LEAF as the second cheapest total cost of ownership of all US-sold automobiles after the Toyota Yaris. My own research showed their electric cost assumptions didn't factor in off-peak rates at one-third of normal costs. Even with today's low gas prices, some new electric cars' TCOs can compare favorably against their gas competitors.

On the other hand, privilege has to factor in. Range anxiety doesn't matter if you have money. I've never run out of electricity and I can afford to be late to appointments if needed. I can afford the uncertainty of being an early adopter in a cold weather state with fewer chargers because I have alternatives available if needed.

Electric cars will become a no-brainer for cost sensitive people in future as ranges increase and used ones become more available. However, my decision only makes sense with some level of privilege.

Give me a break.

I've never bought a new car in my life and never intend to.

My current daily is a 1992 Subaru Loyale that I bought for $450. It has selectable 4x4, gets amazing mileage on the highway (>35mpg) and has lived through many Yukon winters. It starts nicely even below -40C/F. Being a wagon it's an awesome road-trip car and the roof racks often have something on them.

It has a few clunks and rattles, and when something major dies I'll ditch it, but at this point I've driven it over 50,000 kms so it owes me nothing.

Also in 2007 I bought a 7 year old Jeep Wrangler for $6,250. I then drove it 65,000kms (40k miles) from Alaska to Argentina and never had a single mechanical problem. I sold it after the drive for $5k, so it only "cost" me $1,250.

Did you even read the article?

Sounds like you accept the fact that the Subaru can die at any time. The article specifically talks about how that's a privilege that many people don't have. If someone is living paycheck to paycheck, and could get fired from their mcjob for being late, then having a car die could literally lead to homelessness.

I can guarantee that your Loyale is not comparable to the safety ratings of any new cars. That's a HUGE deciding factor in the used vs new car debate. I'd wager you didn't factor that into your purchasing decision.

People with families have passengers' safety to think about when buying a car.

Aside from that, while you seem apathetic about the social value surrounding your car - others see the status of a new car as well worth the premium. For those people it can be a hobby or a source of major self-validation and pride.

I then drove it 65,000kms (40k miles) from Alaska to Argentina

That sounds interesting. Have you written about it anywhere?

http://theroadchoseme.com

If you're interested in traveling like that, checkout http://wikioverland.org

I'm reminded of the song "$1000 Car" by the Bottlerockets. Here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbJA9RM4Cc

"Now you're the owner of a $2000 $1000 car"

Nice tune, thanks. I like to say, you can afford a $500-2K car if you can afford another $500-2K car today. A buddy replied yesterday that then you have two non-op cars ;) I agree with what the article and one comment says about time and privilege, I'm lucky to have the other circumstances align so as to be able to afford these cheap cars.

So the problem with cheap cars is risk. Are there companies selling after market warranties for these things? I'd be curious to compare a cheap car + triple A + some form of insurance to a recently new car still under warranty.

We have them in the UK

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/car-insurance/car-warranty/

It is also $50 per year for vehicle rescue - they take you to a repair centre of some sort.

For $100 per year they will take you to your UK destination.

http://www.greenflag.com/

More like £18.90 ($30) with https://breakdown.rescuemycar.com/

I've used them and never had a problem.

Things might be a bit different in the UK because the annual MOT gives a good indication that these schemes are going to be dealing with cars that have been mechanically checked. For example my previous car (Renault Clio) failed a couple of times due to the CV boot being torn. CV boot was mentioned in an earlier thread.

More on the MOT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test

The recently new car still under warranty still requires insurance... car payment + insurance + gas can still quickly add up.

Over the years I've had a used car, a number of leased cars and a financed new car which I will finish paying off in 2 months.

I can tell you that during their lifetimes, the used car cost me by far the least (so far). It cost me a a single repair - bodywork for a minor accident and basic maintenance (oil changes etc). The insurance - even fully comprehensive was much less than my other vehicles. Which costs me a small fortune every month (even though I'm almost 40, have never had an accident and only a couple of minor speeding infractions - both less than 15 km/h over the posted limit - both more than 3 years ago.)

The leased vehicles cost me the most (comparatively) for their very short lifetimes, but gave me the greatest peace of mind as they were fully warrantied for the life of the lease. At the end of the lease I had a number of options: I can lease another vehicle, rolling what equity I have gained (if there is anything, which dealerships are notorious about making sure there is little or none); I can prepare ahead and put money aside every month for the inevitable balloon payment that comes at the end when you want to buy the lease out, or the headache of trying to refinance this payment; or I can give the vehicle back and basically lose everything I've paid into it during the lifetime of the vehicle. None of these options are great. You're basically renting a car.

The warranty on my financed vehicle ran out a full 12 months before my finance and 12,000 km short of my mileage. This had the highest monthly outgoings, I lost (a lot of) money on depreciation. But having had it from new was good for peace of mind and I had constant set payments to the end of the finance period - so none of the headaches you have to deal with when you have a lease, plus at the end of the finance, the car is all yours, to do with as you please.

Ongoing maintenance was in a similar ballpark for each vehicle so there were no real savings to compare between any of the vehicles. Gas has largely been the same, I do the same mileage regardless of the vehicle - and the gas mileage has been similar in all vehicles. The biggest saving grace for my financed vehicle is that (I'm hoping) its cost over time (vs. cost of repairs) will gradually decrease to a point that its ongoing costs can be considered negligible... until like everything else, eventually it'll need a repair that is too costly to justify and I'll look for my next purchase, which may well be a used vehicle of the same year/make/model. This way I can rip spare parts off my old one as needed.

I can't speak for triple A costs as I haven't needed to pay for triple A since I had a used car as both the leases and the financed vehicle have had triple A for the duration of the finance, however, I've only needed to call it once in all that time because the dealership forgot to include a jack with one vehicle and would you credit it, it was that vehicle I had a blowout and had to change the tire, on the side of a dark, wet, snowy highway at 5am. If there had been a jack, I wouldn't have needed triple A at all.

So having been through the cycle with every means of purchasing a vehicle and seeing the financial implications first hand, I think I'm most likely to go back to buying used next time I need another vehicle. My biggest reasons for going that route are: I lose nothing on depreciation; the monthly payments will be negligible, if anything; If I play my cards right, the cost of repairs should be far less than the monthly payments on something new; routine maintenance should keep surprises to a minimum.

That's just my $0.02, YMMV

Yep, a nice example for comparison. How many of you would buy an used car with a million miles on the clock? Weren't anything with less miles available? Consider the value depreciation of a new car, this will usually be several hundred per month, add more insurance costs, costly servicing (because you can't service it anywhere you want), add financing costs (loan or leasing) and you'll see why everybody wants you to buy a new car. Ten year old car is not really that old, come on, and most of the parts/systems are probably perfectly allright.

No you don't.

New Toyota corolla: $16,000 2005 Toyota corolla: $4,000

I don't think there exists a scenario where you can end up outspending the MSRP if you buy a used previous model. Say for example your absolute lemon has chassis damage and needs to be scrapped (that's the absolute worst scenario). You still have $12,000 with which to buy another used car. Say you spend a whole week working on it to fix something catastrophic. I don't think anything would take that long but anyway. How many people actually make $12,000 in a week? Not many that need to save money on cars.

It's almost like you didn't read the article to discover that his point was only tangentially related to the headline.

Actually, I would bet I did read it and his point was directly addressing the article. In fact, the article itself commits suicide by the end when the author admits that one can just hire a mechanic to do the work. (And his quoted price for per-hour is ridiculously high. My mechanic charges me 70$ per hours, not 170$.)

And yes, the author's point is totally dead. How can one be able to pay 300$ every single month but unable to pay 600$ once every blue moon for a big repair? Predictability is oversold. The only fact remaining is people inability to live within their budget; if you can somehow put away 300$ every month when forced to pay for a new car's reimbursement, you should be able to put aside the half as much for future unknowns.

This is not theoretical since that's how I live and how I manage my car. I own a 2001 Corolla. I even had to change both the motor and transmission two years ago. The cost of which, including parts and labor, came down to less that one year's worth of payment on a new car.

You can buy used car. You can pay for repair. It's still cheaper than a new car, and you don't need magical privilege to do so.

(Simple real-world hindsight would tell anyone so. Just look around: poor people drive old cars. According to you and the author, they couldn't. Yet they do. So, which is wrong: reality or arguments on a page?)

He doesn't say "used car". He says "cheap car". Those two things are different and seem to be a great source of confusion in your comment and others in this thread.

Also, he said $170 for two hours of labor.

Bingo. It's pretty common for people to comment without reading the link on sites like reddit, but that was never the case here. Until recently, that is.

They see the title, then head right to the comment section to give their "superior" opinion.

When I came in here, there were three top-level comments and all of them were variations on "I drive a late-model used version of a reliable car with relatively low miles and it's never broken down!"

I would say more than half of the people commenting here either did not read or did not absorb the message of the article.

I don't see it that way. As long as the posting itself causes discussion to occur, then that's great. If that happens because of the title, rather than the content then so be it.

Additionally, I'm mostly participating and reading the comments here because of the general topic of new vs used cars. The content, at least in this case, is irrelevant to me.

It's not so much about earning $12,000 a week, but rather working for a company that's flexible enough to let you take a week of on short notice to fix your car, regardless of pay.

In what crazy world do you live that it takes a week to fix a car? And that there are no transport links or taxis?

This whole discussion is coming across as if Americans have crap transport links, have no such things as taxis and really bad quality cars.

Because this discussion is just plain bonkers from a UK perspective.

On carmax a 2005 Corolla with over 100k miles still sells for over $9000.

General car advice is the minimum you should spend on a used car is at least $5000. And that's if you're really lucky. If you want a problem free used car for a usable amount of time (3-4 years) then you need to go up to at least $8000.

As someone who tried to sell a $2000 Honda Accord one time for $1200 (to get it out of my driveway before I started getting angry letters from the HOA), I agree. It's tough to find a buyer in that price range that has cash, or at least a check that will clear. Pretty much everyone that looked at it wanted to make payments to me for the car. And no, I wasn't going to chase them down every two weeks for my $100.

edit: Wanted to also point out that banks won't lend on cars that old or cheap or decrepit. Someone in that position who needs a car to get to work, has no option but to pay cash.

Maybe the time of year is somewhat relevant.

I haven't sold in that price range before, but I imagine at tax time there's some cars being bought for that price, certainly.

I was expecting college students, high school students, etc. who just needed basic reliable {mostly} transportation.

But no. I ended up selling it to a lady whose car had been totaled in an accident, and $1200 was what the insurance pay-out was. She had never driven a manual transmission before, so a Honda was a good choice for her to learn on. It was painful to listen to her grind gears as she drove away, though...

I'm always leery when I see absolute numbers like that bandied about without qualification of when someone decided they were a good idea. If someone actually spent some time and figured that out in 1995, that doesn't really mean the same thing as in 2015, just from inflation (the simple inflation calculator I just looked up and used shows it at over $7500).

And that's ignoring all the other things that may affect the automotive industry over time, such as different regulations causing different materials to be used which can greatly affect how long the cars from that era may last. I own a car from 1973, I'm in no way confident that the same model car in 2015 will still be drivable in 40 years.

Not to mention a $5000 Jeep Wrangler is entirely different from a $5000 Ford Mustang from a $5000 Toyota Corolla.

As to your last point, I have no reason to believe cars aren't lasting longer and longer. Engine life is determined more by use than age. (Do you have a million miles on your 40 year old car? Probably not)

This is a great resource for when your teenager comes to you with terrible eagerness - "Hey Dad, I found a truck online and it's only $1000. Will you come look at it with me?".

The only person I know who has been able to own and enjoy cheap cars is my friend who sells and fixes up cars. It's not just knowing how to fix up a car that's important, it's also knowing what to look for when buying a used car.

There is only one way buying a used car ever makes sense. If you have zero credit, no-one to co-sign with you, thousands of dollars in spending cash, find a perfectly maintained not-damaged low-mileage reliable formerly popular car for 1/10th its original value, and do not depend on getting places in a timely fashion.

I have owned about 7 used cars, so I consider myself an authority on bad decisions when it comes to cars.

There is no way to cheat the gods of autos. If you want a luxury car, you will forever pay luxury prices. If you want a fast car, it will break quickly. If you want an inexpensive car, the only one worth buying will be the one you want the least. Cheap, reliable, sexy: pick two.

Any used car you buy for $1,000 after tax tags & title, and it has no problems, is a good purchase. But don't ever repair it. Use duct tape and WD-40 and change the brakes, but never fix anything on it. When it finally stops running [which will be in 6-12 months] go buy another car. You're still paying less than for a new car.

Here are two fun stories. One about a modified sports car, and another about a used luxury car.

---

The 1993 Toyota MR2's chameleon paint job gleamed purple-blue-red-orange as I walked around it to the underside of the engine, next to the trunk. The mechanic showed me where the turbo needed to be mounted up, the oil ring seal that had failed (causing turbo overheat and almost explosion) and the OEM replacement they'd tried to order. Only this turbo (and maybe engine?) wasn't OEM - not for America anyway. Apparently the old part had come from some mystery shipment in Japan and installed by a mystery tuning shop in North Carolina, and the mechanic had no idea what kind of oil seal to replace it with.

Of course, I had another car to drive, because i'm a privileged 20-year-old IT worker with cash to throw away on a ridiculous used purple sports car. So I continued on to work with my other car(s) while I researched where to find a replacement part. Finally I found it - thanks to a very helpful Toyota dealer in Australia - and had it shipped over for a small fortune.

About a month after the initial failure and my little baby was purring like a kitten once more.

---

The 2004 Lexus IS300 had what you would call a "colorful history" of parts failures.

Long ago the driver side speakers had stopped working and half the speedometer lights had gone out. It had experienced no less than four water-pump-induced radiator meltdowns, with miraculously no warping of the engine. The left rear speed sensor had been replaced after the shreds of cheap drifting tires wrapped itself around the rear axle and tore the wire away. The entire front left suspension i'd replaced over the course of two weeks (at that time I lived 30 minutes walking from my job, so no biggie) after bumping into a curb.

After the bumper cover was stolen in Baltimore I collected approximately half it's value from insurance and never replaced it. After another curb-bump (due to ice) and parts replaced by a shady mechanic, the left front speed sensor suddenly stopped working, leaving the traction control disabled. The O2 sensors had long since thrown codes requiring their replacement, or possible investigation of the catalytic converter [of which a replacement is $1,000, one forked proprietary chain of three catalytic converts].

But the most pressing problem was more obvious.

The left front headlight had intermittently stopped working some years before in the coldest periods of "Florida winter". It would eventually start working again, so it was ignored until it finally stopped coming on at all; then the headlight that was out would switch places, finally going back to the first. Tried the usual fixes; replace the bulb, nothing. Get a new HID projector (because luxury cars don't come with "stupid old bulbs"; that wouldn't be luxurious), but still nothing. Fuses are all good. Final thought? Electrical problem.

No big deal, right? Could be a mystery wiring problem. New wiring harness cost? $1,000. Well screw going OEM, let's go to a junk yard. Oh... IS300s never come into junk yards, do they? Ah huh... seems the parts are so expensive and rare, people get paid to strip the parts and sell 'em on ebay for near-OEM prices, without a guarantee.

So here I am, finally paid the used car off after 7 years, in quite a state of disrepair, with a value that is thousands of dollars less than the cost of total repair of all the broken bits. All the rest of the problems can be ignored, but the police stop you for a bad headlight. And then there's the safety inspection.

I could have just bought a new car and had half this stuff warrantied, would have been paid off sooner at lower interest rate, and would have been much cheaper to replace had the badge been a large encircled "T" instead of a large encircled "L". Because the same car sold in Japan by Toyota costs thousands less.

> There is only one way buying a used car ever makes sense.

When you have enough sense not to buy a new car!

I regret purchasing my new Mazda for $25k when I could fix my older SUV (like, major, rejuvenating fixes) for $5k.

You'd just end up fixing it again for another $5k, and another $5k, and another. It adds up, in small amounts of time, labor and parts.

There is no used car fairy. You don't get to pay $5k for the equivalent of a $25k car. Physics pretty much puts that to a stop by constantly degrading every part in the car.

The whole point of "mileage" in buying used cars is not that a car is better or worse at a given mileage, but that it's more and more and more likely to fail. Each part has a guesstimated point at which it will fail, because all the parts have defects. As your car gets older, practically every single part fails. You end up replacing everything. Your old SUV will eventually cost you as much as that new Mazda.

The hedged bet with a new car is that by the time you pay it off, you won't have paid anything other than regular maintenance costs, and you can now buy yet another new car. If you drive like a grandma or barely drive at all and garage the car you can stretch this out for a long time. Most people are not grandmas.

Leasing is a very sensible solution for most people because it combines hassle-free maintenance-free car ownership with a promise for an always-working car at a fixed [read: no surprises] price.

> Tavarish and his friend are both skilled mechanics. [ ... ] Privilege!

Skill is not privilege. Skill is acquired through sweat, not conferred.

Of two unequally privileged people, one may attend mechanic school, but only the ones who sweat will attain skill.

You're ignoring the systematic factors that lead to one person being able to attain car-repairing skills over the other.

"Al, in fact, was a former Lamborghini tech. What’s that training worth? Do most poor people have it?"

No one is denying that Al probably put in a lot of hard work, but that he was able to get to that point is a part of privilege too.

You seem to claim that privilege will give you skill. It will not. You need sweat to gain skill.

Here is a quote from someone who actually became a Lamborghini tech[1]. It supports my statement that sweat is more important than privilege in acquiring skill, emphasis mine:

"i did need not go to any toher after school like audi etc. i got perfect attendence and didnt have a grade under 94. i always went to another school at night during my course in high performance engine building. just work hard and when you go to school work hard. more than half the kids sat thier all day talking about cars and didnt care about there grades. and the most important thing you need luck. haha to be honest. i am a technician here on the service side. you never know unless you try. every body told me i was nuts cause i sent about 60 resumes to every top dealer and performance shop that had something to do with lambo and ferrari and all these great companys, and i got it. just work hard and dont give up. my first day at work i got to work on and drive the veyron. it was insane "

[1] http://www.lamborghini-talk.com/vbforum/f4/how-become-lambor...

I never claimed that you needed only privilege to gain skill, or that you didn't need sweat to gain skill. What I said was that even those who work hard were able to do so (able to work hard) because of some privilege that they had.

> "those who work hard were able to do so [...] because of some privilege they had."

Yes, this is where you are wrong. It is possible to work hard without starting from privilege. Try re-reading your statement in a week when you are less attached to it and see what you think:

Working hard does not require privilege.

Working hard is a choice every individual makes, every minute of the day.

It is possible to work hard with starting from privilege and then gain skill.

Skill is gained by hard work and is earned. It is not the result of privilege.

Skill is not the same as privilege. Skill is earned by sweat and can not be granted.

Privilege can grant many advantages, but it can never confer skill.

Skill can only be earned.

That is how you make money on internet. Car broke down? Dress it up and write an article.

In next level write about someone sooo rich, he does not even own the car.

Actually yes. During college;a friend of mine and I would purchase broken-used-sports-cars on craigslist, repair them in a garage we rented and resell them.

I owned some sweet cars for as little as weeks at a time, made some loot(a little) and I learned a shit ton about fixing cars.

What are you referring to?

Tavarish's blog is gold. Baruth's post is thoughtful commentary and reflection.

None of it is click-bait.

I just don't get this guy. He is trying to thoughtfully mock some reflection, but it just show him as an alien from different planet.

Yes, there are people who have to rely on $500 cars. Yes, cars sometimes broke down, people have to walk, freeze whatever. And yes, you should do maintenance even on cheap used cars. And yes, if you buy junk you should probably change some critical parts.

And no, it is not a privilege to own this sort of car.

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