How long would you expect a $3500.00 car to last?

[Slacker]

I was thinking about this, the car I am currently driving is a 2000 Crown Vic ex detectives car.

Bought it six years ago for $3500.00 and have put very little into it, did the front pads twice, had the intake replaced for a cracked thermostat housing, a couple oil changes

So now it looks like I can beat a couple more years out of it, or try to nurse it along and spend into it, but it feels like it would be better to grab another newer model for the same money.

So, if I get a total of eight years out of a $3500.00 car, would you think that was reasonable?

 

[mmntech]

A car lasts as long as it's well taken car of, and there are parts available. Those crown vic cop cars are near indestructible. Plus, you drive a cop car. How cool is that!

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

a $3500 kia, about 8 weeks. a $3500 crown vic, as long as it's not a 4th hand former Donk or homie car that has been neglected and jacked up to fit 26" spinners on it, with regular maint, should last 300k.

 

[alevasseur14]

Depends on the car obviously. I paid 1K for my '96 VW Passatt three years ago now. Still running like a champ 40,000 miles later.

Police Interceptors are legendary for a reason though. Spec'd for heavy duty use with gobs of spare parts available. Stick with it if you like it!

 

[Thegonagle]

Anywhere between 1 and 20 years. There are far too many variables to possibly give a serious answer.

Basically, drive it, do the planned maintenance, and when it breaks, fix it or have it fixed. Repeat until you're tired of fixing or driving it and want something new, or until the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the repaired vehicle.

 

[SyndromeOCZ]

a $3500 kia, about 8 weeks. a $3500 crown vic, as long as it's not a 4th hand former Donk or homie car that has been neglected and jacked up to fit 26" spinners on it, with regular maint, should last 300k.

My $300 Kia lasted me 1 year, 10k miles. Then I turned around and sold it for $350. It was a Kia Sephia.. 1999 or 2001 or somewhere around there.

 

[thedarkwolf]

I paid $800 for an 89 dodge caravan turbo and drove it 13 years before selling it for $500 with a cracked cylinder wall. I put probably $3k into over those years including rebuilding the engine and trans and doing both right not half assed but still that is cheap driving for 13 years. It had power everything, cruise, and working a/c what more can you ask for lol.

A couple cars before that I had an 81 plymouth horizan I got for free because it broke down in my parent's driveway. I rebuilt the carb, front brakes, and put new tires on it all together for about $300 and drove it about 2 years as a college beater then sold it for $300. That car was a heap of poop.

 

[LTC8K6]

Still driving a 1995 Taurus 3.8L and a 1996 Lumina 3.1L. I would guess that their sale price was below $3,500.00 about a decade ago.

 

[Gillbot]

A car lasts as long as it's well taken car of, and there are parts available. Those crown vic cop cars are near indestructible. Plus, you drive a cop car. How cool is that!

I had a $50 ford I bought out of a field once. Put tires on it, changed the fluids and drove it for over 3 years. The entire time it got regular maintenance and ran perfect. Ended up selling it and the new owner still drives it.

 

[JCH13]

I've seen Crown Victoria Taxis with 450k miles on them in NYC. You should be good for a few more years if you keep up with regular maintenance. They are particularly picky about transmission services being done on time (I had one as my first car).

 

[bvalpati]

The only bad thing about cop cars is they tend to have a ton of idle hours on them so the mileage isn't always indicative of how much wear the engine has on it. On the other hand they are generally very well maintained.

You can find tons of Saturns around for less than $3500 that will last forever. Plastic body panels plus a simple, cheap and easy to maintain 4 banger.

 

[mvbighead]

I'd say roughly 3,000,000 miles...
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost.aspx?post=010cc0af-e437-4754-bcc8-dd1da7923a78

The reality is, the car will last as long as you want it to. For me, the one thing that may greatly eat away the cars life is rust. If your suspension components are bolted to a rusted out frame, you're going to see some handling/drivability problems rather quickly, especially if the frame is rusted through. I have a co-worker who still has a driveable Nissan Sentra, but apparently the rust is getting to the point that many places don't want to touch it. Find a car with a bad transmission, and there'll be several shops that want to jump in a fix her up. Rusted out frame, not as much, and even if you do, chances are the costs greatly exceed the cost of a similar car with a body that is in sound shape.

But for the most part, as long as you take care of the oils and fluids, most things should last quite a while.

 

[CraigRT]

a $3500 kia, about 8 weeks. a $3500 crown vic, as long as it's not a 4th hand former Donk or homie car that has been neglected and jacked up to fit 26" spinners on it, with regular maint, should last 300k.

Agree, it totally depends on the car.
I bought my last Saturn for $300 and it ran great. It started to get the signs of needing a clutch and at that point I'd just had enough of maintaining old cars so I traded in for my Civic.
It all depends on what you consider lasting, IE, what's worth fixing etc. I generally would fix anything if I liked the car enough.

 

[Kntx]

I just sold my 98 contour for $2,000 (near enough to $3,500) and I don't expect it to last the week!

 

[Slacker]

I know you can make a car last, but I don't want to sink money into a vehicle and end up driving a 15 year old car that I have so much money in and then feel obligated to keep putting more into it.

So, instead of putting 3k in it, I could sell it easily at 1k and then use the 3k I would have put in repairs to buy a newer model, seen a few 2007 cvpi at 4k and in a couple of years it would be 2009's around that range.

I plan to get at least two more years out of this car and then see what is available.

But, this post wasn't meant to be about my car really, I was curious what people expect out of a used car, as you can see I do not believe in investing in a car past the purchase and maintenance if the cost of repairs looks to be even close to half what the car cost or would cost to replace.

 

[jagec]

the 3k I would have put in repairs

If you don't do your own work, the math on old cars works out VERY differently. If you do your own work, it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE to spend $3k on repairs for a common economy car.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Well I did spend a lot on my $800 van but spread out over 13 years it wasn't that big of a deal. You also have to factor in knowing your vehicle. Would you rather spend say $1500 to fix your old POS that you know everything about or buy a new $1500 POS and hope it doesn't die soon too. I'd rather have my old POS with a brand new engine than a new POS with another old engine.

 

[alevasseur14]

Well I did spend a lot on my $800 van but spread out over 13 years it wasn't that big of a deal. You also have to factor in knowing your vehicle. Would you rather spend say $1500 to fix your old POS that you know everything about or buy a new $1500 POS and hope it doesn't die soon too. I'd rather have my old POS with a brand new engine than a new POS with another old engine.

Well said, sir.

 

[jagec]

Well I did spend a lot on my $800 van but spread out over 13 years it wasn't that big of a deal. You also have to factor in knowing your vehicle. Would you rather spend say $1500 to fix your old POS that you know everything about or buy a new $1500 POS and hope it doesn't die soon too. I'd rather have my old POS with a brand new engine than a new POS with another old engine.

Very good point. It's all too tempting to say "I just sunk hundreds of dollars on my car, it must be junk, I should get a better one" every time you have a repair. Granted, if your car is continuously costing you hundreds of dollars in repairs, maybe it's time to look elsewhere, but assuming that there aren't underlying engineering flaws with the design, repairs should ADD value to the car in your mind.

I guess it accounts for all those cheap used cars with tons of new parts on Craigslist, though.

 

[power_hour]

Very good point. It's all too tempting to say "I just sunk hundreds of dollars on my car, it must be junk, I should get a better one" every time you have a repair. Granted, if your car is continuously costing you hundreds of dollars in repairs, maybe it's time to look elsewhere, but assuming that there aren't underlying engineering flaws with the design, repairs should ADD value to the car in your mind.

I guess it accounts for all those cheap used cars with tons of new parts on Craigslist, though.

All cars cost $$$ to run. Sure he sells his $3000 car for $1000. Spends another $2K or more to buy something else.

Or just keep it and drive it into the ground. You can't predict the next car will be any more reliable at that price point. What he has now is a solid car. Selling it and hoping to find something better is crazy talk.

 

[JCH13]

Very good point. It's all too tempting to say "I just sunk hundreds of dollars on my car, it must be junk, I should get a better one" every time you have a repair. Granted, if your car is continuously costing you hundreds of dollars in repairs, maybe it's time to look elsewhere, but assuming that there aren't underlying engineering flaws with the design, repairs should ADD value to the car in your mind.

I guess it accounts for all those cheap used cars with tons of new parts on Craigslist, though.

Consider that if you had a newer car, you're losing hundreds or thousands of dollars in depreciation. Frankly, I think that depreciation costs way more money than repairs, especially if you don't get brand new OEM parts installed by a dealer.

Figure if you're under $0.50/mile for purchase price/fuel/repairs, you're better than average, around $0.25/mil you're doing really well. That's how I look at it.

 

[Vdubchaos]

It really comes down to how well it was taken care of and treated.

Interior usually tells you 1/2 the story....

Service records are a MUST

 

[kalrith]

If you don't do your own work, the math on old cars works out VERY differently. If you do your own work, it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE to spend $3k on repairs for a common economy car.

This. I paid $3,500 for my '92 Mercury Cougar 10 years ago. It had 60k miles when we bought it, and now it has 130k (it sat for a few years). I put about $500 into it for pretty much all new steering and suspension components, brakes, hubs, plugs, wires, window motors, etc. The A/C compressor seized, which will probably cost me another $300 or so to replace everything I need to, flush, evacuate, and refill the system. Even if we say $1,000 for everything, that's still so far below what I'd pay for another reliable vehicle, which would probably still require some immediate maintenance.

However, it does depend on how easy/cheap it is to fix the vehicle and how well everything else is working. I have a 2001 Mazda Tribute with 175k miles on it. It needs the transmission rebuilt and cruise components replaced, and it runs pretty rough. Even if I spend the ~$2k to get all that fixed, it might still crap out on me in 10k miles, and it would probably still get poor gas mileage (16mpg mixed). The engine is a transverse-mounted V6, and it's hard just to change to the spark plugs. I can't imagine doing an engine rebuild or what it would cost to have someone install a new engine in it.

One big thing with purchasing another car is not knowing what maintenance has been done. Does it need a new timing belt, water pump, fluid flushes, brakes, etc.? If you don't do that work on your own, it can easily add up to several hundred dollars on top of the purchase price of the newer vehicle. And if you "upgrade" your crown vic to a newer, but less reliable vehicle, then you might be out even more money in the long run.

 

[twinrider1]

Ignore.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

So, instead of putting 3k in it, I could sell it easily at 1k and then use the 3k I would have put in repairs to buy a newer model, seen a few 2007 cvpi at 4k and in a couple of years it would be 2009's around that range.

.

4K for a 2007 cvpi is on the high side. 2 years ago I got a 2006 w/110k miles, detective spec, black, clean interior, cold AC. Needed HVAC mixer. $2400.- Last summer replaced w/2007 whitey CVPI with 120k miles that needs tires for $2,600.-

I expect them to last for 50 smokey burnouts, 10 water hole dives, 300 miles of off-road nonsense, 4 fender benders, and at least a few passes down the drag strip with 100 shot of n2o.