When To Invest In A New Car

When is it time to purchase a new car?  The reason I am asking is that we are not even halfway through the year and I have had some terribly expensive car repairs. 

Earlier this winter I had to replace the driver side rack and pinion assembly, which did not come cheap.

This past Saturday I was stuck in traffic and the air conditioner started blowing warm air.  Not good news when you live in Phoenix and it is 105 outside (in the shade).  So I took it to a reputable auto repair shop and the compressor needed to be replaced among other things.  Again, not cheap.

I drive a 2007 Honda Civic and it has been remarkably reliable up to this point but it does have over 120k miles on it.  Perhaps now is the time to part ways while it has some resale value and move on.

BTW, the vehicle I owned before the Honda was an 93 Acura Integra, which I put 275k miles on before letting it go (it NEVER gave me expensive problems of the sort like the Honda has).  My first thought is to get a new Acura even though they are cost a bit more...

You should invest in at least a newer car when you are putting more into the vehicle in repairs than what the vehicle is worth.  If the car is worth $1500, why would you want to spend $3000 fixing it?  Take that money you've been spending as the measuring stick of whether you need a different vehicle.  If you are shelling out money regularly to keep the current car running, then you are pretty sure that it is going to continue.  Car repairs can be a vicious cycle, but sometimes the only way to break that is to get a more dependable car.

i dread the moment. Our Dodge Caravan (2005) now has 150,000 miles on it and it has been paid off for quite some time. I love not having a car payment. We have had some repairs, luckily stuff less than $1,000 but as high as $600. The CD player went out and I was gonna take it to Best Buy and get a new one. But I remembered the stereo is also part of a DVD system so if I changed it out the DVD player would no longer work and that isn't good when you have kids wanting to watch movies. So I went on eBay and found a Dodge factory stereo for 80 bucks and it worked like a charm. We've had belts replaced, leaks fixed, o2 senors, etc but all basic stuff that wears out with that many miles. The outside and inside still look new. My wife allows no fast food to be eaten in the van so there aren't wrappers or crumbs everywhere. And, like Arizona, the heat here has been around 103 the last few days with 100 % humidity. So we cannot survive without AC for the kids. I can tough it out in my Ford Ranger if it went out but we gotta have it in the van. I am hoping the van will last another 50,000 miles. My truck is a 2000 Ranger and it just now flipped over to 100,000 miles. 

With all of that being said, when repairs costs more than it is worth it is time to buy something else (maybe not even new, I bought my Ranger used and paid cash for it on the lot so I never had any payments on it). But no way would I pay $2000 to get anything fixed. I would use that for my downpayment.

My suggestion is find something that looks like this:




You could really be stylin' in a ride like this around Phoenix!

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My truck is a 2000 Ranger and it just now flipped over to 100,000 miles.

When I still had my Ranger, it was a 2002.  I sold it in 2012 after only ten years of driving it.  I had 220,000 miles on it.  The family that bought it have put another additional 50,000 on it and she is still running like a scalded dog.

My wife's care is a 2007 Saturn Vue.  We have had to do a few things like brakes and such.  Last year, we had a major air conditioning problem but it was merely a hose--not the expensive compressor.  Sadly, Saturn went out of business and there are NO aftermarket parts being made for them.  If you can't find an original, then you are just out of luck.  Well, the shop where we were getting it fixed at knew a guy who could make us a hose and we did.  My wife's car is hitting the 220,000 mark this summer.  I am about to take it on a trip to Cincinnati with the church.

My current truck is a 2006 GMC Canyon.  It was my father-in-law's truck.  I bought it after he died in 2012.  It only had 46,000 on it.  Three years later, it has 108,000.  I still miss my Ranger, but I am going to drive this one for a long time.

Wow, that's awesome that it has almost 300,000 miles on it! I hope I get that out of mine and considering it is now 15 years old and only has 100,000 at that rate it should last me another 20 years! I only drive 3 miles to work (one way) every day and I also use it when we need something from Lowe's that won't fit in the van. 

I recently swapped out the headlights to give it a more "modern" look.





And let me tell you it wasn't as easy as I thought it should have been. It took a while to get the old ones out and the new ones, while looking like they are the same size are a bit off. I had to run down the road to Firestone and have them remove the clips that hold the old ones in. I didn't have needle nose pliers that were long enough to reach down and take them out to get the head lamps to remove. Then when I got the new ones in they don't fit quite right but they look much better and make the front of the truck look better. Less than $100 to do this myself, I think the lamps were around $60. I also recently started using "high milage" oil. Not sure if it is a gimmick or not but it is part synthetic. 

Will keep driving it as long as possible but I think I am due for some new shocks, whenever I hit a bump in the road the truck jumps like crazy. Recently had the ball joints replaced and it rides much, much smoother but when I hit a bump BOOM it isn't good... Still better than a car payment!

We waited until the wife's van was just about on it's last leg and traded it in for a new car this last weekend.  But I'm not sure that "new" is exactly the way to go.  If you can get a "newer" car with an extended warranty I think it would be better.  Those brand new cars depreciate so fast.

Sometimes odd things happen (rack and pinion replacement shouldn't be common) though it does seem that Honda has started cutting corners since the mid 2000s. My 90 Accord died at 170K when the crankshaft pulley bolt just sheared off while cruising down the highway. How often have you heard of something like that happening?

I've put $3500 into my 2002 Civic in the last year and expect to get another 200K out of it (currently at 218K). Normally I wouldn't have sunk that much in such a high mileage car, but they were reasonable repairs for what was needed at the time they happened, and the car is in great condition.

The used market is so marked up in general that I'd likely buy new so I'd have a decent warranty and know the whole history of the vehicle. We've been looking at an SUV. However, so many cars are coming with continuously variable transmissions that while they get better mileage I just don't trust yet since they don't have a proven long-term history and are incredibly expensive to replace currently. I'd only consider one if they gave me a 10 year warranty.

You guys sure are making me nervous about Honda. My wife just got a 2015 Civic less than two weeks ago. On the other hand, it makes me feel better about passing up the Civic for a Corolla.

Hey, we had a Corolla!  Good car!  It was a 99 and we kept it for several years--8 if my memory serves me.  It had somewhere between 140-150K miles on it when we traded it in.  It was just too small for all the things we were doing with the youth group and let her go.  Well, the size was one issue.  The other is that we had destroyed the struts picking up one young lady for church 2 nights a week.  Her driveway was over a mile long and very rough gravel at that.  Over a period of years of that kind of abuse, we were going to have to spend way more on struts than what the trade in or private sale values would have been.

Corollas are not billy goats.  LOL

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You could really be stylin' in a ride like this around Phoenix!

This is kind of ironic in that back in the early eighties I drove an AMC Hornet!

Dynamis wrote:

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You could really be stylin' in a ride like this around Phoenix!

This is kind of ironic in that back in the early eighties I drove an AMC Hornet!

  My uncle had one when I was a kid, and it was a hatchback. He used to load us kids up in it. I hated that car! Maybe you should buy a Porsche, I read in today's paper that JD Power & Assoc. rated them #1 yesterday for the 3rd year in a row.

Gosh, if only I could afford a Porsche- I think the Cayman looks awesome.  Realistically, if I was going to invest in a new car it would be something along the lines of another Honda or a Mazda, Nissan, Acura, etc.

metaldude wrote:

You guys sure are making me nervous about Honda. My wife just got a 2015 Civic less than two weeks ago. On the other hand, it makes me feel better about passing up the Civic for a Corolla.

Good thing it wasn't a CR-V. They only come with a CVT now and are having vibration issues.

Toyota is going downhill just like Honda, too. They are still some of the better makes but not as good as they had been.