Corolla-coastah!Originally Posted by Teacher Terry
Corolla-coastah!
wow, those are good deals!! Every Yaris owner I've ever talked to has been thrilled by the car. Only negative for me is now I can't get the dog kennels in it. The mileage is incredible, and you can't beat Toyota for quality, except that in the 90's I had two 4wd Toyota vans and they were both duds. But that was a long time ago!
I ended up with a spark for a rental one time. When I saw the car I asked how I was suppose to get my golf clubs and luggage in the thing. I was not happy, but it was all they had available. I was not impressed nor felt comfortable in the little thing. When I left the airport I passed a u-haul place, I would have rented a van or pickup if I knew it was there.
Go with a make and model with a reputation for superior reliability, regardless of paying more upfront. You are obviously the sort of person who hangs on to a car for a long time, so you have to spread the few thousand more you might spend on a Toyota versus a similar type of vehicle over the entire period of ownership.
Make Consumer Reports your Bible. It remains, so far as I can tell, the only truly empirically test-based source of info. Most other info, especially that from car magazines, is suspect.
And then make sure you drive them! Once I was convinced I wanted a Subaru Forester and then I drove the Subaru Impreza and loved it--a much better drive. I also rejected a Ford focus because I didn't like the visibility as much as the Yaris.
Used Hondas and Toyotas command a premium price based on an (earned) reputation for reliability. But that doesn't make other brands junk. And, given Toyota's numerous recalls a few years ago, they're not immune to producing a clinker now and then either.
In buying a car you'd like to hang onto for another decade or two I'd be a little careful about some of the choices on your list.
Mitsubishi, frankly, is on life support in the U.S. I'd have to get a great deal on one to make up for the likelihood that they'll pull out of the U.S. in the next few years, which will make getting parts harder. Service still will be possible but parts like armrests and body panels eventually will go out of stock. And Mitsubishi hasn't sold enough cars in the U.S. to support a robust third-party replacement market.
The Mirage, the Versa, and the Spark have the distinction of being the least expensive new cars you can buy in the U.S. While that's a powerful sales proposition for many people, it means the vehicles were designed to a price. I think the negative aspects of that will become more apparent as the years roll on (no offense, UL). If I were looking for an already-used car I planned to hold on to for a decade or longer, I'd spend a little more and buy something else.
The Fiesta and Focus are good cars. I think the Fiesta has been a poor seller because is a little too small for many people (it actually was a semi-finalist for us when we bought DW's Kia Soul but it could not carry all the stuff we knew we frequently would have to move). (We didn't even bother looking at the Focus at that time because the model was a couple of generations behind the Focus the rest of the world got and the American version was no longer competitive). The Focus sells well (okay, as well as anything that's not a CUV/SUV/pickup truck) and there are enough of them in rental fleets and such that used prices are fairly low. That, however, is where you want to be as a used-car buyer. At the price of CPO Hondas and Toyotas, you're not that far behind buying a newer one with a longer warranty and no question marks about maintenance. Better to buy a good car that depreciates like crazy.
I drive a (15-year-old) VW Jetta. They're fun to drive and will last a good long time with proper maintenance. But they are not as trouble-free as the bigger Japanese brands partially because (IMHO) German engineers like to do stuff for the sake of knowing it can be done.If driving for you is moving from Point A to Point B and you want your car to be an appliance and not an experience, I would say a Volkswagen is not your best choice.
You didn't ask, but I'll put in a plug for the Kia Soul. It was our other semi-finalist (besides the Fiesta). DW has had hers for eight years and it has spent almost no time in the shop aside from scheduled maintenance and wear items. The whizzy in-cabin electronics aside, it's as sophisticated as a 10-penny nail, so it's been cheap to run -- except for fuel (it gets terrible mileage for a car its size). The ride in that first-gen model also is kind of harsh, IMHO. But the second generation and up are much better in both respects (though more expensive, too), and the build quality from South Korea these days is nearly up there with Japan's.
One aspect of the purchase that I think is important is how the car was maintained. Almost any car these days will make it past 100,000 miles, but the cost of running it beyond that depends on whether scheduled maintenance was done (on time) and wear items like shocks and brakes attended to before they starting damaging connected components. I'm confident enough in my 15-year-old Jetta to go anywhere with it because it's been maintained. I wouldn't do that in just any used car.
Consumer Reports is not a good source of information about used cars. I agree that the car books have different priorities in testing vehicles and they have no interest in keeping their test vehicle running for a decade or two.
But, statistically speaking, CR's "reliability ratings" are very suspect. Survey respondents are self-selected with no visible attempt made to normalize sample sizes according to vehicle sales. The little dots in the chart are not granular enough to tell you the full story. Entire lines of engines get lumped into one category, so one lemon engine can taint the rating of an entire range even though the rest of them may be bulletproof. A "brake problem" can be anything from "brakes squealed for a few days" to "brakes sometimes fail to stop car"; they're both "problems". Use CR as a guide to more investigation but do not accept their ratings as gospel.
For another good source of used-car repair data, try TrueDelta. There's likely some overlap between CR respondents and TD respondents, but the guy who started TrueDelta did a lot of work to avoid the pitfalls of CR's aggregated ratings. Full disclosure: I did report our Jetta and Soul repair issues to TrueDelta. We are not CR subscribers. The more data points you have, the better the choice you can make.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
I’m a believer in the Consumer Reports annual auto ratings. Their reliability and repair ratings for used vehicles are a close match up to my experiences and those of people I’ve known. They usually have best and worst choices within price ranges or vehicles styles. If I were shopping used cars I’d consider the cost of an online subscription or a visit to the library well worthwhile. Other than that, Honda and Toyota.
Thanks for all the information in this thread. Dh's car is rapidly dying and we will need to get a new-to-us used car. However, the prices listed above are out of the question. Budget is about half that. Sigh... I hate car shopping.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer." Mahatma Gandhi
Be nice whenever possible. It's always possible. HH Dalai Lama
In a world where you can be anything - be kind. Unknown
happystuff, if you can spend no more than $10,000 on a used car, of the ones you listed, choose the best Fiesta or Focus you can find locally and move on with life. They're not bad cars. Ford's reputation (along with that of other American manufacturers) for building bad cars has lingered far longer than reality confirms. All cars have gotten better in the last decade or two. The Fords will be priced below similarly-sized and -equipped Civics and Corollas. I just looked at Ford's site, at which you can search for CPOs near you. They listed several 2014s for my ZIP code, with about 40-50,000 mies on them, for well less than $10,000.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
For years we drove Ford escorts and they were great cars. Always got 200k miles on them. We got our Corolla with 30k miles on it from a private party for 9800 4 years ago. The car is a 2008. It was a retired couple and they didn’t use the second car much.
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