Great topic.....
About a month ago I started to look for a beater for the winter rather than keep driving two SUVs I have. Mainly because of the amount of miles I drive in any given week As one might suspect seeing my name I do have some good connections at car dealers etc and I would cruise the area where their trade ins would come sit before they (clean/docter them up).....
Another trick is to watch if you pass the same dealerships every day is to track something you like and see how many weeks it sits not sold as dealers as a rule get a little antsy when cars sit 60 days or longer...generally prices start to drop in $500 chunks. Miles was not a major concern as cars today with proper care easily surpass 100,000 and more with no major problems mechanically with some exceptions.
You read on the internet what problems certain engines have and try to avoid them. Craigs list besides being entertaining can sometimes yield a great buy. I tend to avoid the humorous ones, and ones that seem to be written in anger, and ones where it appears spelling was not their strong suit.
The trick is to track a particular car or model that has fallen off the first few pages of craigs list and is still for sale. That seller will more than likely start to drop their price. I wanted a beater/winter car that looked really nice, never smoked in, was garage kept,
and checking with my mechanic thinking a GM car with the 3800 motor is about as billet proof as you can get.
You then got to decide do you want to spend under $2500 and spend a few bucks on repairs, or gamble and spend $3500 and up and HOPEFULLY it don;t need nothing major. I went the cheap route since we have connections for getting parts wholesale. I got lucky, kept track of a certain car that had fallen off the first pages of craigs list...matter of fact the seller didn't even have any one look at the car which played in my favor.
A deal was struck (I got him down $600) and he was even nice enough to deliver the car to my house later that nite. Car was garaged kept one owner, spare never used, window sticker in the glove box, almost a full tank of gas, records of recent repairs, everything worked except the GM CD player, biggest thing it needed was rear struts. Idles perfect, no engine noise when cold. Interior is as close to perfect as I have ever seen showing minimal wear at most.
Probably gets 30% or better gas mileage than either of my SUVs do. Car has 135,000 miles on it. With gas prices inching up finding cheap older cars that get good mileage is going to be even tougher soon. Not to mention full size values on SUVs will start to drop even more come Spring.
denniskirban@yahoo.com
In my youth, $200 to $500 bought a decent car two I had in particular a 1950 Ford business coupe $200 and a 1956 Crown Vic I paid $500 for. Youngsters probably have no idea what a Crown Vic is.....
In in some ways its better to buy privately, for several reasons, you see the car in its true form as most sellers don't go over them or detail them much for selling them, you get 2 sets of keys dealing with the actual seller, and usually the seller will be truthful.
