NOHOME said:In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
This is amazing. Not long ago you were not buying green bananas and now you are up to shopping for cars.
Pete
I have to do something to occupy my time. Might as well be an optimist and shop for cars.
NOHOME said:In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
This is amazing. Not long ago you were not buying green bananas and now you are up to shopping for cars.
Pete
I have to do something to occupy my time. Might as well be an optimist and shop for cars.
I've bought 1 new car previously. I didn't have time to berkeley around trying to find a used car. Finding the car you want can be a painful. Process. If you have a house/kids/limited free time, sometimes the last thing you want to do is spend you free weekend day driving to a dealer 2 hours away to have a car sold out from under you. I totally get the appeal of Carvana to people.
I have 1 new car on order. Ford Maverick. I'm planning on moving out of my house, and its the perfect vehicle for my needs. Occasionally carry large items, mountain bikes, gets good mileage, works well for daily duties. If I could buy a used one at a discount I would do so in a heartbeat.
I had to buy my Z28 Camaro in 1982, because every time I drove past the billboard with the white with red stripe one on it, something from my groin interfered with the steering wheel.
An acquaintance once asked if his 3-year-old car would "make it" across the country. If this is the prevailing opinion, then it answers a lot of questions. 
I've owned some true dung wagons but they all ran well enough to cross the country. Most of the cars I've owned were bought from owners who were absolutely sure they were 10 seconds from detonation. I get 'em for a song, take 'em home, fix 'em up and drive 'em for four more years. I've only owned one car with payments and that was the first car I bought to keep instead of flip.
Some of us may get a certain perverse pleasure out of owning cars deemed unownable by their POs. However, my wife did put her foot down and refuse to ride in the more scabrous examples. Now there is a certain cosmetic threshold I must observe.
Having said all that, I don't know if I want to own a car with DoD, idle shutoff at lights, or suspension nannies. Not that I don't believe in fuel mileage, cutting carbon footprints, or safe handling. These systems need to be fixed at some point with long chains of diagnosis, plus some actually affect the vehicle's longevity. Hell, I'm even bugged by the low-tire-pressure warning transmitters in the valve stems of my current '07. They're there, the batteries die, and I either fix them or look at the warning light for all eternity.
I check my tire pressures with a gauge every couple of weeks while I'm gassing up. The oil gets looked at every week. Same for the coolant, etc. So I'd rather own cars without unneeded warnings and with needed dipsticks, especially for auto trannies. My wife's '13 lacks a dipstick, making home-brew tranny flushes a real pain in the ass. The procedure for refilling the trans to the proper limit is only slightly less complicated than the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
Excessive complication doesn't bother me half as much as car actively preventing me from doing needed servicing myself. So I'll be a pre-2015-ish used car owner until I'm gone or electric models get rangier, whichever comes first.
In reply to Jerry From LA :
I was once this way. I refused to have anything that nice etc. I will say it is nice to be pampered and not worry if there was something I forgot. Wife's car picked up a nail, I aired it up (slow leak) and brought it to work to get it in if possible (forgot our guy was on vaca), and it allowed me to watch the actual pressure in the tire to know if I needed to stop and add more or not.
Hi Jerry from LA ,
I'm curious about your age. . I once felt like that myself. Then owned the used car from Hell!
I traded that on a new Vega GT. That was absolutely the best car I'd owned to that point. I sold it when I moved from San Diego. To Minnesota. And couldn't drive 3 cars at once.
I'm a serious gear head. I love working on race cars and vintage cars but hate having to fix a car just to get to work tomorrow.
The time I gained by owning new I spent working on race cars. Vntage cars.
bobzilla said:In reply to Jerry From LA :
I was once this way. I refused to have anything that nice etc. I will say it is nice to be pampered and not worry if there was something I forgot. Wife's car picked up a nail, I aired it up (slow leak) and brought it to work to get it in if possible (forgot our guy was on vaca), and it allowed me to watch the actual pressure in the tire to know if I needed to stop and add more or not.
I don't even have to check the tire monitor on my truck, GM emails me the tire pressures every month.........that's actually somewhat scary.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:bobzilla said:In reply to Jerry From LA :
I was once this way. I refused to have anything that nice etc. I will say it is nice to be pampered and not worry if there was something I forgot. Wife's car picked up a nail, I aired it up (slow leak) and brought it to work to get it in if possible (forgot our guy was on vaca), and it allowed me to watch the actual pressure in the tire to know if I needed to stop and add more or not.
I don't even have to check the tire monitor on my truck, GM emails me the tire pressures every month.........that's actually somewhat scary.
I mean that would be fine, but I needed to know if in the next 10 minutes if it was going to be flat. Silly GM, always a month behind.
In reply to bobzilla :
I'm the same way. I need at least one horse in the stable that I know will just...work. That gives me some freedom on my other cars to be a little more adventurous in terms of projects and deadlines.
I am trying to buy a new car. I am in a position where I can. I keep vehicles for a long time. If I can start that off with a factory warranty, even better. It let's me get what I actually want, not just what I can find, and I am very particular.
In reply to everyone who wrote after me:
Unspoken in my post is buying reliable used cars in the first place. We own Toyotas (okay, mine's a Scion tC). All the purchases are heavily scrutinized before buying. So it's not a never-ending list of repairs. We also live about four blocks from a Toyota dealer. Replacing the clutch in the Scion has been the biggest issue. I chased parts in the minivan and ordered an original clutch from the original maker (Aisin) for a fraction of the Toyota price.
In the past, I'd buy a car, fix all the issues, and do fluids with the occasional brake job after that. The money we don't spend on car payments goes to travel and retirement.
I'm 67, climb mountains for fun, and not dead.
Honestly I will always get new for the wife's car and run to around 150k or when it starts to have problems.
I want a car I can completely trust, I completely know the maintenance history, I have to think about 0% of the time and work on about the same amount. Given what I have seen over the past few years (even prior to COVID) for newer used cars with lower miles price and interest rate wise, I'd rather just buy new. I'll always buy cheap used for myself but having something at the house that I spend zero time thinking about/working on etc is a luxury worth having for me.
Right now though I get new cars free(ish) though work so not something I am worried about now.
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
I had that deal - had a nail in my tire and I pulled the tire stem thingie to lose all the air so I could plug it. In the middle of it my phone dings and it's an email from GM telling me I had a tire low on air. Doh!
Strange feeling - tire stem to truck to cell tower to satellite to computer to send email out to cell tower to my phone 6' from my hands that was on the tire. (Not really sure if that's how it went)
In reply to Puddy46 :
That got driven home in Feb when the 16 year old truck blew a brake line the same day the rear calipers on hte Rio were trying to fall off. Wife was long gone to work in the wrong direction.
In reply to Jerry From LA :
If I lived someplace warm year-round I might not mind so much. But things love to fail/break when it's -5* outside and the heater in the garage is struggling to get it up to 40* and the concrete is still frozen. My joints just can't do it anymore.
Datsun310Guy said:Strange feeling - tire stem to truck to cell tower to satellite to computer to send email out to cell tower to my phone 6' from my hands that was on the tire. (Not really sure if that's how it went)
Pretty close. Probably no satellites involved (those kinds of links exist but they're expensive so only get used when needed) and a bunch more hops in the main service provider networks, but not far off!
My wife recently bought a new RAV4 and to me, its great. Its versatile and practical and probably a guaranteed 10 years of oil changes/tires/brakes only. Things like this are important when you have a busy life. Right now, I have an LR3 with 196k Miles and an NB Miata with 142k miles. They're good and reliable but there's always something that can go wrong. I do plan on getting a new car eventually so I can enjoy my older cars worry-free and know I can get to work no matter what.
bobzilla said:In reply to Jerry From LA :
If I lived someplace warm year-round I might not mind so much. But things love to fail/break when it's -5* outside and the heater in the garage is struggling to get it up to 40* and the concrete is still frozen. My joints just can't do it anymore.
I remember those days rebuilding engines in a non-insulated garage at zero degrees with a quartz heater. I'm not telling anyone what to do. Luckily I have a good constitution and generally good weather (though 110 degrees in the garage will make my head spin or punt for the day) to do what I'm doing. The biggest plus is the lack of rust which allows us to own a car for decades. Nothing is fused together and nothing rots away but the interiors will wither and die.
The biggest decision for me is whether I will hold onto the tC, since the 2.4 liter motor has a known taste for oil. I like the car enough to rebuild the motor with updated pistons and get rid of the oil consumption. That will get me out to 2040 when I either end up going electric or hanging up the keys for good.
What am I buying with a new car? A house. Without the good credit built from buying the FR-S in 2015, I wouldn't have the house I bought in 2019.
I'm with Jerry. I don't buy new. It's cheaper to buy used and used cars are no less reliable than new ones.
My wife, daughter, and middle son just drove 500 miles on a weekend trip in a 23 year old 4wd Suburban thats knocking on the back door of 400k miles. In the last year it's made 3 round trips to New Orleans. Total repairs since purchase are an AC compressor, window regulators, and an alternator.
My youngest drove a 400k mile Colorado to work today.
I just bought a 168k mile Mustang.
The only car that has needed any repairs lately is the newest in the fleet with the fewest miles on it.
Keep in mind, I don't live in the rust belt so cars stay decent looking for a long time down here.
Never bought a new car. I don't think I've ever been in a place where felt that I could. As the expression goes, I started out with nothing and I've still got most of it. At 67, that's unlikely to change.
Still, I don't tolerate unreliable cars. It's possible to have older but still reliable cars. You do have to keep them up.
Up n the frozen Tundra failure of a car can be a life risking deal. Sure you can pull over to the side of the road. But parts? May not be available. ( reason Ford and Chevy's dominate in the upper Midwest)
It gets 40 below and wind chill effects the same as actual. In Southern climate replacing a water pump or doing a brake job may be just comfortable. Up here it is actually dangerous.
Then there is rust, Feel that cold blast at your ankles? Is that floorboards, door skins or cab corners that rusted through?
Step on the brakes and if it feels like an overripe banana, that means a brake line called it quits. Use cardboard to keep from melting into the snow and ice. I've actually had to remove my jacket because it froze to solidly to the ground.
Good news? Most interiors are very nice on the way to the junkyards.
Time:
For me that's the biggest value from buying a new vehicle. Between work, kids activities, and the fun stuff I want to do, not having to work on a daily is huge. The idea of only regular maintenance, and warranty for anything more involved for several years is extremely valuable. The dealers I've used have provided rentals, loaners or shuttle service for work that's more than a couple hours.
Reliability:
Knowing it will start when I go out to leave is great. The low probability that something is on its last legs and could fail at an inopportune time reduces stress (i.e. less of the "is that a new noise? Does it sound serious? Should I pull over and check it now or can it wait?"). Even minor repairs can be a pain when it needs to be done in order to get to work the next morning.
Convenience:
The ability to plug my phone in and have hands free and navigation displayed right on the dash is nice. No risk of tickets from hands free laws and safer than trying to interact with the phone screen.
Disclosure: I didnt want 2 payments right now so I'm currently driving a 2007 jeep GC (Covid purchase after my son totaled my truck), while my wife has a 21 Sportage. Previously we had a Sedona and Elantra that both were bought new and driven until 120k-150k before getting something new.
I curse the jeep every time something new starts rattling, I add oil because of a leak, or the aftermarket Bluetooth module flakes out.
Couple of things to bear in mind in terms of new cars- population growth of drivers and the number of vehicles permanently taken off the road. New car sales have to match those just to make sure there are used cars to even buy.
Something many people gloss over is safety. New cars have better crumple zones, airbags that haven't been in the elements for decades, better seats etc. when it comes to the wife she deserves all of that imo because she's the most important part of me.
wondering if something happens will that 10-20 year old airbag work correctly? With the seat belt pretension? Is the structure still solid enough or has rust compromised it? Are the seatbelt anchors not rotted away and likely to eject you?
You'll need to log in to post.
