Car shopping

I will probably never own a new car. This is something I learned from my parents, who also never owned a new car. But, as with everything in life, there are trade-offs. I may save tens of thousands of dollars, but I take on a greater load of worry. You have to make sure you get regular maintenance, and with every oil change you wonder what else the mechanic is going to find about to break. You think twice about making longer trips.

My record with used cars is mixed. I’ve had six cars in my lifetime, and of those three have held together for more than five years. My first car made it eight years. The next made it maybe two. The third we gave away after a couple years, and it still only lasted another year or two after that. But our fourth we’ve had for eleven years, and it’s still going. The fifth has made it nine years and counting. This week we picked up our sixth.

Our fourth car, now 21 years old, is showing its age. It leaks/burns oil at the rate of a quart every two weeks. The air conditioning died (again) two years ago. And lately it’s been developing an odd casualness toward driving straight at high speeds. Since the vast majority of the time I drive on the freeway this has become a serious concern. The mechanic says it’s time for all new struts, to the tune of $1500. There comes a time when keeping an old one going is no longer cost effective. That $1500 would go quite a way toward something newer. I decided it was time to find something else.

But I do hate car shopping. I’ve never been a car-tinkerer, so I don’t really know how to spot potential problems. A car can look good but be full of problems just waiting to pounce. You can go with brands you know, but even that’s no guarantee. Each car is different, each has had a different history. I know from experience that “Little old lady drivers who only used it to go to church” do exist. But so do young adult males who think they’re Jeff Gordon.

There is reason to suspect that one of the three previous owners of this car was the latter. Someone decided to put custom, racing-style wheels on an old Toyota Corolla. Yes, my new vehicle has American Racing rims. It also has a radio/cassette-player with buttons for playing CDs, though I can see no means of actually loading a CD. Several door handles are broken. Only time will tell whether these are just quirks of the individual car or clues I should have picked up on.

I had the car in to the mechanic for the state inspection and emissions testing, and had them give me an idea of what work they saw it would need while we were at it. To my relief it’s fairly minor. At least I don’t have to feel bad. If they didn’t see anything, how could I have been expected to? Buying a used car is always a bit of a craps-shoot. Y’pays your money and y’takes your chances. I still have my fingers crossed that this will turn out to be a solid car. The good news is that it came in well under our budget, so I’ve still got a fair amount of budget left to deal with repairs.

It’s a bit strange getting used to a different car after ten years of driving the previous one. Yes, it’s a Toyota Corolla, too, but there are quite a few differences in how it handles, how it feels, how it sounds, etc. This one has a fat steering wheel, for example. The oil goes in on the opposite side from what I’m used to. It’s got daytime running lights. The response of the gas pedal is different. The seat feels different.

But hey, it’s got working A/C. That’s kind of an important one down here in the summer. Between the A/C and the custom wheels I’m going to look totally cool.

On a side note, our closest DMV office is fast. I walked in, found a receptionist, got a number, and before I even had the number slip securely in my hand the automated queuing system was already calling it. The entire stop took about ten minutes. Perhaps there is a difference between DMV offices, though I didn’t find the one where I got my Utah license to be terribly bad, either. Utah may have its problems, but it seems to have an efficient DMV.