Venting. Cars

With winter here started looking for a car for the kid. He rode his motorcycle all year after the old car was sold. Of course winter in Colorado is cold. Time for a beater car. Nothing fancy. Just something 4w/awd, stick and usable in winter for a few years. Just want something that won?t explode or freak out like new cars do.
Colorado used car prices are nuts. $5k for a 200,000mi car/truck, and not sure if it makes it through winter.
Weekend listings that want to sell that day on Sunday , and usually do. So better bring cash. Econo boxes beat to crap. CVT transmissions that are just before the mileage they blow up ? runs perfect, needs nothing ?. Or my favorite: title was lost.

It?s a sellers market. I get it. But just frustrating as hell.

You can thank Cash-for-Clunkers for eliminating two generations of starter cars.

I have started planning for my own kid to drive in three years. Same as you, I've had sticker shock. I've decided I'm probably going to buy a fleet vehicle at work. Most of the pool cars are four door sedans that get retired around the 80K mile mark for tax purposes. I know they are clean and have had a maintenance schedule performed. Meant reframing my acceptable price range from $5-7K to $10-12K, which was a tough hill to get over mentally, but I figure with two years to set aside some cash, it won't be the end of the world. And it will beat accidentally buying a flood salvage car or something ragged out by the previous owner.

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Originally Posted by JohnnyEgo

I have started planning for my own kid to drive in three years. Same as you, I've had sticker shock. I've decided I'm probably going to buy a fleet vehicle at work. Most of the pool cars are four door sedans that get retired around the 80K mile mark for tax purposes. I know they are clean and have had a maintenance schedule performed. Meant reframing my acceptable price range from $5-7K to $10-12K, which was a tough hill to get over mentally, but I figure with two years to set aside some cash, it won't be the end of the world. And it will beat accidentally buying a flood salvage car or something ragged out by the previous owner.

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This is where my wife and I try to prevent ourselves from saying, "do you regret not having kids"? Yep, every chance we get. Apologies to our parents.
We do regret not being able to help in this, though.

Meh. Be glad you aren?t looking for a decent, low mileage pickup truck. I?ve literally paid less for a house.

Avoid used car dealers if you can.

In another thread I mentioned some of the shenanigans I have witnessed a few greaseball dealers pulling off.

It's a dirty, dirty business.

New car dealers are much better. I never saw anything shady at the few I have worked at.

I have 6 years before my oldest starts driving. I have an 89 F150 for him to learn on and drive. It needs some work, but he and I will be doing the work so he has a vested interest in it. My next oldest will be getting his soon, he has 8 years before he is driving. I found a 92 K5 Blazer that I should be getting in the next few weeks. After motor and tranny, it has no rust and only one dent. We live a couple miles up a dirt road, so 4x4 is required.

The optimistic side of me kind of smiles knowing my thirteen year old vehicle may be worth more than I paid for it eight years ago. Plus, I was considering selling my wife?s vehicle a couple of years ago and was hoping to get $2500 for it. Looks like it would be a bargain for someone at twice that much today.

I traded a 5 year old imprezza for a 22 wrx. Dealer gave me the sticker price of the imprezza when it was new. MSRP on the wrx. Saw my car listed for $500 more than they gave me on trade.

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Originally Posted by .455_Hunter

You can thank Cash-for-Clunkers for eliminating two generations of starter cars.

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Yep. Totally. Add the dollars depreciation. Add chip shortage. Add new trucks going for close to $100k.

Best part is the youngest needs a car in April. So there is another car purchase soon.

Will probably step up a bit in price in hopes to minimize the repair times. (Will do my own work, or he will but don?t want crazy repairs in winter ). What?s funny now is that an older Audi AWD car is starting to look reasonable.

The real deals are on Craigslist if you are handy. Do a search filtered for 4wd vehicles, starting with the cheapest. Once you scroll past the dummies that list their price as $1-$30, you'll start getting the cars people are just trying to get rid of. Read the descriptions, you can tell a lot from reading between the lines. inevitably you'll find something that needs a deep clean and new brakes for cheap. I bought my son's 1999 jeep cherokee with 160k miles for 1200. We put brakes, some new front end parts on it, etc and tires. It would sell for 5k now.

Well: wait 2 month if you can…. Car loans in 2023 will be the new sub prime crisis of 2008. People can’t afford their loan and cars are getting repoed faster than ever before… Bank are starting to freak out with the number of default and will unload them for cheap asap. Dealers have bought used POS thinking they can turn a profit, and these are sitting on lots all over the country.

Over half of car buyers can’t qualify for the best rates on loan and some are presented with a 10, 12% rate on a 72 to 84 month, for a used truck at 70k…. No one can afford that.

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Originally Posted by ray1970

The optimistic side of me kind of smiles knowing my thirteen year old vehicle may be worth more than I paid for it eight years ago. Plus, I was considering selling my wife?s vehicle a couple of years ago and was hoping to get $2500 for it. Looks like it would be a bargain for someone at twice that much today.

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I hear ya. Our 08 seinna (58k miles) paid $13k from the original owner, when dealers wanted $18k + for a 100k mileage and up . Was offered $13-14k on trade in, towards a $40k unit [ROFL3]. We're driving all our vehicles in to the ground. Lowest mileage is 109k, highest on the 4x4 150- 160k . Even the 08 versa, hatchback with 120k (original owner) maintained will bring me $5k, easy, if not more. Especially when i post the window sticker showing 27-33 mpg.

Yep. Saw that when I bought my Colorado this summer. I wound up saying screw it and buying a new one. When a new one costs $40k and the used ones I was looking at were 4-5 years old and still priced at $36-38k, why not.

I wonder though if an economic downturn might actually increase the value of used cars.

If people lose jobs or have to take a pay cut, there is a bigger market out there for a $10,000 car than for a $50,000 car.

An older audi is cheap because they are crazy expensive to fix and work on. From talking to a mechanic friend, it sounds like BMW and Audi don't want their cars to run forever and thus be driven as older cars by middle and low class people. It's sort of like planned obsolescence, but with a darker, more shrewd motivation. Don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.

Are car auctions a thing anymore?

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Originally Posted by leightoncash

An older audi is cheap because they are crazy expensive to fix and work on. From talking to a mechanic friend, it sounds like BMW and Audi don't want their cars to run forever and thus be driven as older cars by middle and low class people. It's sort of like planned obsolescence, but with a darker, more shrewd motivation. Don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.

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Actually it's the opposite. European drivers (especially Germans) keep their cars on average 2.5 times longer than Americans. The difference is they service their cars at a much higher standard than Americans do. Americans want to pay for oil changes, tires and brakes and say screw the rest. as an example, A German will replace an Audi alternator as part of routine maintenance. They know how to care for the cars and they last.

Yes they are expensive to own. The reward is a driving experience you wont find in other import or domestic cars.

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Originally Posted by Rooskibar03

Actually it's the opposite. European drivers (especially Germans) keep their cars on average 2.5 times longer than Americans. The difference is they service their cars at a much higher standard than Americans do. Americans want to pay for oil changes, tires and brakes and say screw the rest. as an example, A German will replace an Audi alternator as part of routine maintenance. They know how to care for the cars and they last.

Yes they are expensive to own. The reward is a driving experience you wont find in other import or domestic cars.

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So I will start with some German to answer: Jein.

New cars in Germany are rarely purchased by induvials. They are company cars that are given as part of the compensation package.

The employer gets tax breaks. The employee gets tax breaks.

The taxes on a car that an employee pays is 1% of the original price of the car per month. Note that it never goes down. It is the original price. (this tax rate is much lower than buying the car with taxed money).

So, since employees pay on NEW price they dont want a car more than 2 to 3 years old because they are paying the same taxes for a 5 year old car as a brand new one. They then get sold (all over Europe) on the secondary market after 2 to 3 years. The companies lease the cars for 2 to 3 years.

This is a way that the Germans can pump up their new car industry and why you see so many new (90% German) cars on road.

I was in Germany last week and the company was switching cars around. The only cars available to me were two E-class Mercedes because they being moved into the car-pool for occasional use for the last year of their lease and the employees were getting new ones.

One of my co-workers had just taken delivery of his new mercedes the day before he picked me up at the train station.

What Germany has figured out how to do is legally subsidized their auto industry with tax code. It legal and not against tariff laws because the same deal is available for cars of any origin (Japanese, American,. French, German, etc). It works for them because visual estimation is 90% of cars in Germany are German cars.



Here is a quick link I found.
https://gted.net/2022/11/hidden-tax-...%20per%20month.


Another one
https://www.oeko.de/en/press/archive...her-schieflage

My company was in the market for a couple F650 26ft flatbeds. Dang hard to find. Everything used was $90k for 300k+ miles. That's insane.

Ended up getting lucky and finding two new the day they came in. Bought them both. Brand new cost $90k and currently putting another $20K in sides and a lift gate. $20K more for brand new than 300k mile used. I'll take it for the warranty alone.

What I don’t understand is how trucks go so expensive.

The manufacturers have found a niche that is willing to take big loans / leases to have the “biggest”

I also suspect many people buy more car/truck than they can really afford

Buying $100k pickup… a person should be earning $200-250k to be able to really afford it.

So it's the opposite in which way?

You actually can do nothing but fluids and brakes on Toyota or Lexus and you'll go way over 100k miles before you need to even think about replacing something. That same Euro approach to car maintenance that you describe will make a japanese car go even longer.
German cars, especially Audis, are famous for having catastrophic issues when they get older. That's why their resale value plummets like a rock.

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Originally Posted by flogger

Are car auctions a thing anymore?

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Yes. However most of them are dealer only. That is how they get their inventory.

Manheim is the big one in town. It's out at Smith and Buckley. Huge place and hundreds of guys turn out every auction.

One of the best cheap beater cars you can find is an old Volvo 240 sedan. Built like a tank, super reliable, and no way he'll be hot rodding that.

Second choice would be a 3rd or 4th generation V6 Camry. Great cars, surprisingly fast, expect to replace the struts though, and although they are safe in an accident the crumple zones in the 4th generation guarantee it'll be totaled even with a low speed impact.

There's an auction every Saturday a little over an hour from me, open to the public

So almost found a great truck. Had a deal to see and essentially pick the truck up but could not meet until 1PM. Call the guy and talk at 9:30am to meet up at 1. No problem see u then. At 12:50 text him I?m on my way. ?Sorry it?s gone?. Ok. Wtf. Never mentioned anything about me being a backup or having others in que.
If he had told me I would have met him at 10 and rescheduled some meetings. Grrr.

Had a guy call me back an hour later about another truck.
Met up and did a no issue handshake deal for an agreed price with a pick up at a later date. This truck is higher mileage and has a few issues to sort out. But is down right ?nice? compared to the other junkers out there. The owner tried to fix everything but realized he did not need a farm truck for his small goats. Not to mention the Ranger clutch was too much for his kid. So I should be picking up the truck in a week or so, which is fine as my son is spending Christmas with grandpa.

So in conclusion. Have cash and run to the great deal. And there is still good folks out there, although far and widely spread out.

Surprisingly, I do see certain used vehicles to be appreciating assets, but it's less to do with economy in my mind (although inflation will not stop rolling now), and heavily involved in all the new regulations they are pushing on car manufacturers.

Not only do they have to integrate more crap, add more weight, but also cut down the MPG to fairy numbers, and on top of it, they have to soon add crap like "drunk driver detection".

Not sure about you guys, but I'm not keen on buying a $100,000 vehicle that I have to give a blowjob to every time I want to start it, or alternatively, has a video camera monitoring my every move to forward to big brother, all for the privileges' of having something entirely gutless and impossible to maintain and with 640+ chips that constitute unique points of failure. New vehicles aren't going to last 100k miles. They aren't maintainable without insane expense involved. And I'm far from the only one that feels, and will feel this way.

Until they legislate used vehicles out of existence, they are headed in the direction of pre 1986' NFA in some regards. Just more ubiquitous, so you won't see the 2000% value increase or anything, but depreciation will only start to affect the new ones.

My 2 cents.

I agree with you FA. I think circa 2010 are the sweet spot. Good crash protection created with computer modeling during design, decent engines with good enough electronics but some issues, and not a lot of gov driven features.
And if you want more reliable but willing to give up some inherent safety then a 2005 or so model year is the way to go.

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Originally Posted by FoxtArt

Until they legislate used vehicles out of existence...

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Just give 'em time...

I like hearing that it's still a sellers' market.

I'm fixing to sell my 2009 Expedition EL when I get back to Colorado next month. I don't remember the mileage but it was used primarily as a camping vehicle while I was active with the Boy Scouts or when bad weather hit and I wanted something sturdy so I've been putting about 5000-7000 miles a year on it in the 11 years I've owned it (bought it used and I think it was a rental for its first year). I just don't need that much cargo room now that I'm not involved with Scouting.

What happened to "Kids" owning their own destiny and buying their own car & insurance? When I was a kid and wanted a car my parents told me to get a job and pay for it myself. They also mandated that I saved up enough to pay a full year of insurance (my own policy, not being added to theirs) up front. It took me a year of working and saving but I got it done. Its all about learning about how to be an adult isn't it?

Jumping through "Adulting" hoops for your kids doesn't teach them anything.....

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Originally Posted by CHA-LEE

What happened to "Kids" owning their own destiny and buying their own car & insurance? When I was a kid and wanted a car my parents told me to get a job and pay for it myself. They also mandated that I saved up enough to pay a full year of insurance (my own policy, not being added to theirs) up front. It took me a year of working and saving but I got it done. Its all about learning about how to be an adult isn't it?

Jumping through "Adulting" hoops for your kids doesn't teach them anything.....

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My first car cost $75 for a stock Bonneville 389 convertible and like new tires. I paid cash:) drove it home. That's when the parents said, nice car, it sits here till you can afford the ins.

Now it cost more to fill a tank, than my 62 did.

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Originally Posted by CHA-LEE

What happened to "Kids" owning their own destiny and buying their own car & insurance? When I was a kid and wanted a car my parents told me to get a job and pay for it myself. They also mandated that I saved up enough to pay a full year of insurance (my own policy, not being added to theirs) up front. It took me a year of working and saving but I got it done. Its all about learning about how to be an adult isn't it?

Jumping through "Adulting" hoops for your kids doesn't teach them anything.....

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Same thing that happened to young adults buying a house. Virtually impossible now.

My first car cost $450 in 1998. I made $4.15/hr. Roughly 100hrs work.

Starting wage for a kid now is around $14/hr. 100hrs work = $1,400. Can't buy a drivable car for $1,400 these days.

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Originally Posted by hollohas

Can't buy a drivable car for $1,400 these days.

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Well, you might be able to find one but it would likely be a clapped out piece of feces with about 300K miles.

I wanted a car and my parents told me to make enough for a down payment and they will finance me the rest at 5%. 75% of the way though the first summer got to pull up to work in my 84z28.( before you think I was more spoiled than I was I graduated in 04) Also got to enjoy learning how to maintain and change everything on a 350. My kid is 10 now I might do the same approach with him. Learned paying a loan sucks. Didn?t have another loan until I bought my first house at 22. Then never had a car loan until I was 29. Still never owned a new car.