Comment by hansvm 2 days ago
The Honda Fit is great. You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission (used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable), and if you're using it heavily then you have the advantage that most cara on the market take less abuse, so you can maybe grab a decade beyond that by picking up somebody else's used Fit when you're done repairing yours.
This is the issue with mine here in Minnesota. Rust is the car killer.
> used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable
Where are you finding a 100k mile Honda Fit for $3k? Before I bought my current daily driver, Honda Fits were on my list to look out for and in the central NJ area I never saw one in decent condition around that mileage for less than $5k. Even looking now I see people trying to part out theirs for $2k or looking for $4k for a 200k mile one. I messaged someone on FB Marketplace that had a 2013 with 65k miles on it to try and bring down their $11k asking to $8k and just got ignored.
NJ is probably on the higher end of the market but the deviation can't be that big.
Sorry I wasn't clear. You can get a motor with 100k miles from a totaled car for $3k, including the labor to replace it.
To your actual question, I bought mine (2008, manual) in 2018 for $5k with 100k miles in The Bay, and it took about a month of waiting for a good deal to crop up. I've put another 100k on it without issue and plan to drive it a long time. Inflation and the chip shortage have roughly kept up with depreciation, so I'm currently seeing some good options in the $6k range and similarly expect that $5k is around the bottom of what you can pay for a nice vehicle with 100k miles on it.
Also, deviations can absolutely be that big. It's more prevalent at the top of the market, but there are big differences in Subarus and Civics, for example, in different parts of the country, even in the sub-$5k range. It's often worth a flight and driving back to purchase a car (if you value your time at $0 or have other things to do while you're there).
Damn, that's a great deal. And yea, $5k seems to be about the bottom of the barrel in terms of getting a decent car.
For my "daily" driver (I drive a few times a week and it's rarely more than 20 miles), I ended up buying an imported WRX on an auction site. Cost more than a used Honda Fit but it's a ton of fun to drive.
Japanese cars, particularly cars that have been orphaned, keep their value at high mileage.
If I had to get a high mileage car in a hurry in upstate NY with some expectation that my acquisition + repair costs would be reason I'd go looking for a 2005 Buick. Maybe half of that is getting older, the other half is that my son drives a '96 Buick which has needed some creative maintenance but has been rock solid reliable after a flurry of work where we replaced aging parts.
Why a Buick? Which 2005 Buick? You can probably, find a simpler or less expensive doppelgänger if you look at the same car but with a Chevy or an Olds badge. I don’t mean this as a dig, simply curios.
Buick is gonna be less ragged out than an Impala or Olds of same age (you see the same with the Grand Marquis vs the Crown Vic). An 05ish one will come with a 3400 or 3800v6 which was pretty solid and cheap to own by then. The rest of the car is nothing special, just keep oil and coolant in it and drive it.
Basically he's picking a very well sorted platform of a vehicle and then choosing the brand that most correlates with buyers who'll keep it in good order.
When my son got his first job and needed a car in a hurry to commute I helped him get his first car and in the search we wound up looking at a lot of Buicks that we liked and were at a good price and in good condition, particularly circa 2005 though we wound up with a '96 Park Avenue. It was my first experience owning an American car (title in my name for the cheaper insurance) and my own experience plus what I read indicates I probably would have done well with one of the 2005s.
My take is that at that age you don't pay that much more for the upbadged car but you're likely to find it in good condition but you get to enjoy the bling (the '96 is ahead of its time with traction control) and Buicks of that vintage have one of the best engines GM ever made.
>You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission
In many parts of the country (I'm Canadian, I assume the same for the US) the body and undercarriage are going to rot before the drivetrain goes.