Quote:
Originally Posted by ProDarwin
How are your mechanic skills? How long do you plan on keeping the car? How important is mileage to you?
You can get decent "old combustion" stuff pretty cheap. I picked up my 1998 SL2 for a relatively high $3000. Its got leather, sunroof, etc. and is great condition. It had 100k miles on it. I enjoy buying things in this range as I can sell them in a year or two after driving 30 or 40k miles and the depreciation hit is very minimal (and sometimes zero). Also the required maintenance is still pretty low.
That said, if I planned on keeping a car longer than 3 or 4 years (which is very hard for me to do), I'd snag a used Prius as the money saved on gas would be enough to offset the depreciation and higher purchase price.
Finally, if I had zero mechanical skills, I wouldn't fault anyone for buying a new car for $13K that they are guaranteed to have no problems with. Those first 100K warrantied miles cost about 10 cents a mile more.
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All I've technically done at this point is change oil, change tires, that sort of thing. I'm a good learner, but if I can't find detailed info on how to do something I probably won't be messing with it.
I don't really have a strong preference for how long I want to keep the vehicle.