Totally

[ladysprite]

I just got the call from my insurance company; my car has been officially declared totalled.

RIP Little Silver Saturn. October 2001 - January 2014. You lasted almost forever, you drove nearly 200,000 miles with me, and you gave your life to protect me. You were the first treat I bought myself after graduating from vet school, and the first car I bought that wasn't an ancient death trap.

I miss you.

Coincidentally, I now find myself in the market for a new car, having not actually paid any attention to cars for the past decade-plus. In a perfect world I'd just go on driving Saturns forever, but sadly that's not an option.

So, anyone out there who knows more about cars than I do (which is likely most of y'all), advise me. I'm not looking for brand-new; I know that's kind of a sucker deal. I want something small - not Smartcar small, but I don't need or want an SUV. Easy to take care of and good fuel efficiency are important; I'd like a hybrid if I can but I'm not sure how they fare in the used market. And affordable is a plus; I've been out of work for 4 months and I'm not going to be getting huge amounts of money back for my poor lost baby.

Advice? Suggestions? Spare vehicles you have lying around?

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

(here via browngirl)

I'm sorry about your car. Hopefully you and whoever was riding with you are all OK?

I liked my Saturn SL2. I got rid of it with 80,000 miles on it, at about six years old. Only reason I sold it was that my mom had passed away and left me her Saturn Ion, less than a year old with 4,000 miles on it--and what a POS that car turned out to be! Shoulda kept the old one.

Brand-new is not quite the sucker bet it used to be, especially if you plan on owning the car until the wheels fall off of it, as appears to be your style. Typically the interest rate on a new-car loan is lower, and you can get a six-year loan...as much as buying a car on payments is a sucker bet, it can make budgeting easier. (The reality is that most people don't buy a car, they buy a payment book.) There's also a certain peace-of-mind factor to having something that's brand new, under warranty, and that someone prior to you didn't mistreat or neglect, particularly at the low end of the market. You have to decide how much that's worth to you.

Hybrids command a substantial price premium over their conventional counterparts. That price premium pays for a lot of gas. I'm not sure that the economics are there to recommend a hybrid over a fuel-efficient car like a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, if the "hybrid vs. not" decision is strictly a matter of economics for you. There are plenty of other reasons to buy one, of course: you want to support the technology, you're the sort of person who likes hacking one, the eco-cred factor, and so on. Hybrids, it turns out, actually fare pretty well in the used market, and they've been around long enough at this point that independent mechanics should be familiar with them--service and parts are no longer a dealer-only thing. (Dorman now makes replacement battery packs for Priuses for about $1000 each, so the inevitable battery-pack replacement didn't turn out to be the worry that people thought it would be maybe 5-10 years ago.)

As far as *what* to buy...it's tough to buy a bad car these days. The quality game of the last 30 years has pretty much pushed everyone selling cars in North America and Europe to step up their game or step out. I think at this point the primary question is going to be "What suits your needs and budget?" and "How does the car feel?", meaning ergonomics. Are things positioned conveniently for everyone who's going to drive the car, can everyone see out, etc., etc. Narrow it down to 2-3 models and then test drive.

If you're unemployed right now, you may want to take the insurance check and buy a used beater for cash, just to bridge the gap between now and when you get a job again and become more aware of what your budget is. In a few months or a year you can probably sell it for close to what you paid for it, and you'll have reliable transport for zero car payment in the meantime.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

ypically the interest rate on a new-car loan is lower, and you can get a six-year loan...as much as buying a car on payments is a sucker bet, it can make budgeting easier.

I got my Fit new, with financing from Honda: zero point nine percent over five years. At that rate I didn't quibble over sticker price. A Honda dealer's margin on a new Fit is about $500. I'm paying less than that for the total interest.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

At 0.9%, it's actually cheaper to buy on credit. Assuming you had the cash on hand to pay cash outright for the car, you could probably exceed a 0.9% rate of return on investing the money quite easily. Profit!

The only difference would be if you could make up the difference by negotiating a lower price on the car. FWIW, "sale price less invoice price" isn't the profit the dealer ends up making on the car; they end up receiving dealer holdback (http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/dealer-holdback/), a percentage of MSRP that's paid to the dealer after the vehicle is sold, so they're still making a tidy sum even if they sell the car for "invoice".

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Cash that I did not have on hand.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, most people don't.