Efficient, cheap beaters! Used car ads: 35 mpg highway or more for $1500 or less

[Nissandriver]

My plan used to be $100 per month of purchase price. If I bought a $1200 car I hoped to be able to drive it for 12 months without doing any real work on it. With these high prices I don´t know if that´s possible any more. I bought a 1997 Sentra in 2016 for $1300. I drove it two years and 25,000 miles doing nothing more than changing the oil and installing $100 of stereo equipment. I bought an 1999 Infiniti G20 in 2017 for $1400. I´ve got about $2100 (purchase plus parts) in the car and spent about 30-40 hours working on it. I´ve driven it for 5 years and 35,000 miles. I could sell it as junk for $100 and be pleased with what it has cost me. But I intend to scrap it and sell any parts I can and use any parts that I can. This might be it´s last year. When it´s time to renew the tag and insurance I´ll have to decide if I think it´s worth driving another year.

[freebeard]

I made ten $100 payments on the Metro and then threw on $200 in tires. Right in that range.



My album says I added the picture in Oct 2020, so two+ years. It's running fine, but all the mechanics I know passed on or retired so i don't know who I would turn to.

[Cd]

My Civic is having it's electrical gremlin again.
Starts on first crank and runs flawlessly.
Then I turn off the key and it doesn't get the fuel pump to prime. SOOOOO ...I glanced at ads for 3rd gen Prius.
This is double the " $1,500 ", but still cheap enough to show here.
200 + K miles, so no doubt the traction battery is toast.
The body and interior look good though ( 2010 Prius $3'500 214 K ):
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/listin...CMpwQAvD_BwE#/

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by Cd

My Civic is having it's electrical gremlin again.
Starts on first crank and runs flawlessly.
Then I turn off the key and it doesn't get the fuel pump to prime. SOOOOO ...I glanced at ads for 3rd gen Prius.
This is double the " $1,500 ", but still cheap enough to show here.
200 + K miles, so no doubt the traction battery is toast.
The body and interior look good though ( 2010 Prius $3'500 214 K ):
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/listin...CMpwQAvD_BwE#/

I'd avoid the 2010 and 2011 Prius due to excessive oil consumption. The other years are pretty rock solid. Don't discount the Prius C either, they can sometimes be had for less and their battery replacements are cheaper. Gets about 0-5 mpg lower on the hwy and 5-10 mpg higher in the city compared to the full size Prius.

[Gasoline Fumes]

I've never paid more than $300 for an Insight, but here's one for $2500:
https://ottawa.craigslist.org/cto/d/...588536796.html

[Xist]

I expect flipped cars to have hacks like stop leak.

My Camry had gasketmaker in a bolt hole, presumably to temporarily stop the valve cover leak.

[hayden55]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

I'd avoid the 2010 and 2011 Prius due to excessive oil consumption. The other years are pretty rock solid. Don't discount the Prius C either, they can sometimes be had for less and their battery replacements are cheaper. Gets about 0-5 mpg lower on the hwy and 5-10 mpg higher in the city compared to the full size Prius.

Its not just 2010-2011. Its the entire gen 3 prius which is an oil burner and head gasket popper (for a reason). The solution is not a big deal though. Piston soak, clean the intake valves, injector tips, intake manifold egr path, egr valve, and egr cooler (the egr system), and clean the pcv valve and its good to go. You can do all of that all at once in an overnight period for cheap if you are up to doing it. The car just has wimpy piston rings which allows them to clog up easy and consume oil and it clogs all of those items. If you clean it all out and swap to 5k full syn oil changes it won't have those problems anymore.
It pops the head gasket commonly because the egr clogs and the car misfires for 20k on cylinder 1 without throwing a check engine light. Finally when it does hit knock threshold limit to throw a check engine light its probably already popped the head gasket on cylinder 1 or 2.
More or less the egr system is not maintenance free but toyota acted like it was, and toyota acted like 10k oil changes were okay and they were not on the newer cars with low tension rings.

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Didn't they change the piston types mid year 2012? I rarely hear of failures past then. My mom has a 2014 with over 200k miles with no issues at all.

[hayden55]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Didn't they change the piston types mid year 2012? I rarely hear of failures past then. My mom has a 2014 with over 200k miles with no issues at all.

The oil burning is not all that common on any of them but they will all blow a head gasket around 200k if you don't service the egr system

[Isaac Zachary]

Toyota also doesn't specify brake fluid changes on newer cars that I know of. And then you end up ruining +$2,000 hybrid brake controller units.