What used car to buy?

[anelson81993]

Personally, I'm Chevrolet girl. I bought my first car in May 2012 after my *beloved* Intrepid gave up (after a decade of use by my parents), and it was a Chevrolet Impala. I'm an on-campus student who works approximately 50 miles from campus on the weekends, back in my hometown, and I use my car for around-town driving when necessary, so it sees a lot of use. It had around 34,000 miles on it when I bought it in May and is just under 40,000 now. It has required no maintenance work, and runs as beautifully as the day I bought it. My parents also have an Impala, and recently bought a second so that my sister can drive the paid-off one when she turns sixteen in a couple months. My parents have been driving various Chevy cars for years (my mom loves their Traverse), and we only very rarely have any kind of maintence issue, and our cars are almost never in the shop. All in all, I can't recommend Chevrolet highly enough.

As far as price goes, I bought my Impala (an '09) for 15500 OTD (that is, after tax title license). I put 1500 down and financed the last 14000. However, at the time I also had the option of buying a couple different older Impalas for less (I picked mine for more because it had fewer miles on it), and I think with a good dealership you could probably find an older one in your 10-12 range.

 

[mrodgers]

Each to his own, but I could tell you horror stories about the Chryslers we have owned because we thought we couldn't afford Hondas. They are cheaper for a reason. All the ones we owned were crap by the time they were to 125K miles, if they even lasted that long. I will never, ever, for any reason own another Chrysler product.

Yup. I try to talk my mother into buying herself a Honda Civic. She loves Ford and will only ever buy Ford. She says that she's owned her Ford for 17 years and it's only been in the shop maybe 6 times.

Problem with that is, it only has 56,000 miles on it. If that was my car, that would equate to being in the shop at least 3 times a year. That is not quality or reliability in my eyes.

Conversely, I've owned Toyota, Nissan, and Honda over the last 20 years. I've never been in the shop and I bought all of them used. The lowest mileage when I sold was the Nissan at 169,000 miles. I ended up buying a new Ford for my wife thinking I wanted to buy new and settled with Ford because I couldn't afford new Toyota or Nissan. It was nothing but headaches with increased maintenance (replacing wear items 4 times as often as I was use to with my Japanese cars) and repairs (1 single non-routine repair on my previous 5 Toyotas with a combined mileage of 500,000 miles.) I bought that Ford brand new and actually had never passed state inspection. It needed work every year for inspection.

 

[Judique]

I'm a fan of the 'certified - preowned' car dealerships. Some warranty to get you through a bit and seem to hold their value for resale if necessary.

 

[dh464]

We recently purchased a certified used Nissan Altima.our son is very happy with it!