Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
You ever read the guy on Jalopnik that's always urging everyone to buy used luxury cars? The posts are always headlined with something like "You could own this lethally fast Mercedes for the price of a Hyundai" or the like.
His main thesis is that for cars that originally stickered north of 60 grand or so (often extremely north) depreciation is like a magic ticket to swanky land. So that if you know something about the car you're getting (and German cars in particular have some well-documented time bombs) you can pick one up with 50,000 miles on the clock for pennies on the dollar, budget to have the necessary prophylactic work done immediately, and still come out way ahead. The corollary to this thesis is that these cars are just built better than the average sub $30,000 family hauler (weird lapses excepted) so a well maintained $60,000+ car with 50k miles is a way better value proposition than aformentioned cheap car with 20k miles. Plus you get to ride around in a car with tons of amenities and great driving characteristics and just generally revel in the luxury of it all.
Of course the comments are full of "sure, the price of a Hyundai to buy, then the price of a Hyundai every year there after to maintain." But the dude is pretty adamant that if you do your research and budget for any big show stoppers (for instance, the years Audi put the timing chain behind the engine because it would last forever and under specced the tensioner, or some years of Mercedes' Airmatic suspension) you can do very well and drive the thing for a long time relatively trouble free. Probably helps to be or know a mechanic, but a decent independent garage that specializes in your car will do.
|
I would gladly settle for the cheap car with 20K miles but I'm at the point in my life where I don't really care that much about what I drive. "Cheap" cars are so much better than they were when I was growing up and can be super reliable with not a lot of maintenance. I cringe when I read someone saying you can pick up a V-12 7 Series for not much money. I think people shouldn't buy these cars unless they could've afforded them new. Unless you are very handy you'll still need a rich guys wallet to maintain a lot of these cars despite the fact that they now have a working mans price tag. It's easy to get a car to 60K miles without much maintenance. That's really a bunch of oil changes and maybe some brakes depending on the driver but after that the more expensive stuff can kick in and the unexpected stuff like the fancy high tech suspensions you mentioned or the need to remove the engine or the entire front of the car to do some thing like a timing belt or spark plugs.