I need to buy an additional or replacement vehicle of some type soon, because the two I have do not really do everything they need to do to be worth having. I am not sure whether a brand new vehicle makes sense considering what I would mostly use it for.
-I drive to work 4 days a week less than 10 miles each way, and pretty much any safely functional vehicle will work for that, I even used my mom's 66 Beetle for a few months last year and it was fine.
-I often go to see live music (other than during the pandemic), which usually involves driving an hour or so and leaving the car parked on the street in the dark in a high crime area, so the less attention it attracts the better. The main down side to using an old car for this im often driving in heavy 85-90mph traffic, which means an old car is at pretty high RPM, and it can be difficult to stop fast enough when needed considering you don't get much more than 1.5 car lengths of space before someone cuts in front of you.
-Every couple months or so I take a longer trip (mostly on the freeway), which also generally involves needing to be able to drive 85+ mph for long periods of time, but otherwise any functional car can do it.
-Also every month-couple months I go camping which both involves freeway and mild off pavement driving (any 4x4 with low range and good tires can do anything I'd want to do, and most of it a Subaru is even fine).
I currently mostly drive a 96 Subaru Legacy Outback, which does most of that stuff ok, but it really doesn't stop well enough to be great in modern traffic, and is often at 3500+ RPM to keep up. Also, there are a few issues that can't realistically be repaired like the radio not working (minor but still annoying), it leaks gear oil from the rear axle seals even though they were just changes, and the worst issue is that the transmission crunches shifting into second gear and leaks gear oil onto the cat. From what I can find out those transmissions can't be rebuilt anymore, and the one in the car now is the 3rd used one I have tried and they have all had the same problem. I also have a Boxster that I have only driven a little bit and I have started trying to do some maintenance on it, but I think it may be beyond my skill level so I'm leaning toward selling it while it's just preventative work that it needs rather than something that keeps it from being driven.
I could probably buy something like a Ford Maverick, Hyundai Santa Cruz or other similar priced new vehicle and use it for most of what I would want, but it sounds like a year or more before new vehicles will be readily available at sticker price, and I'm not sure if it would be worth the money for the type of things I would normally be doing. Something like a Subaru Outback Wilderness would be perfect but is $10K+ more than I would really want to spend.
If I buy a used vehicle I would want to avoid anything 1976-99 that isn't diesel powered because they are only going to get more difficult to find a place to do emissions testing in California, and I am not really good enough at working on cars to not get frustrated with anything 2000+, and they seem to deteriorate far faster than older cars. I am honestly not sure what I would get, I drove a Porsche Cayenne and I liked it but know I would hate working on it, and a 1992 Mercedes 300SD which seemed ok (I have had diesel Mercedes before) but is slow and would really be more of a project because I would want to do an engine swap to be happy with it. I have also considered getting an IDI diesel Ford (or maybe 6.5 Chevy but it's very hard to even find one for sale) to use for camping/backup vehicle for other stuff to make it easier to put off making a decision on buying any other vehicles later. I don't really like the idea of later model used vehicles, because even with 100k miles most of the interesting ones aren't that much cheaper than new, and I would rather buy a $25k new vehicle with a warranty and no miles on it than pay $17.5k for one with 80k.
Not sure if there is a real answer, I'm just not sure if spending the money to buy a boring but brand new vehicle would get me anything that cheap old ones won't.
