So, you're not a trust fund baby. You've still got 3.5 terms of grad school to finish before you achieve that high paying degree in 13th century Peruvian Art and your student loan was maxed by your last road trip to the Burning Man Festival. On which, your hand-me-down Chevy Celebrity rejected its transmission transplant of a year ago. You've managed to scrape together a thousand bucks with plans to lease one of those oh so shiny Wolkswagon Jettas. STOP!! Back away from the checkbook slowly! I've got some things you should hear before you head to the nearest German auto dealer. Don't get me wrong here, I love that new Jetta body as much as the next guy, but that thing costs almost $20,000! In this day and age of: Nothing down and no payments till Jan. 1, 2000!! It's too easy to make multi-zero decisions without lots of careful thought.
One of the careful thoughts you should have before you sign away the next three years of car payments is: I wonder if my sister in-law would sell me her old Toyota for $850. I know this is a revolutionary idea and goes against all our consumer urges to have latest and greatest, but it just might be a good idea in your case. The weaknesses of the $850-mobile are often exaggerated to paint the worst possible picture I plan to do the opposite.
Reliability is one of the first concerns that comes to mind. The trick is to spend so little on the vehicle that you actually smile when it spontaneously combusts. We all need something "reliable" my question is how reliable? Many a rust bucket will survive for another 3 years, happily blowing blue smoke. How long was that lease? Three years wasn't it? At $199/month. That adds up to $7164. You can go through a lot of old Toyotas before you spend anything near $7000. Sure enough it is "unreliable" but for $850 you will laugh your way to the bank if you can live with it. Now I need to make an important distinction. There are two different flavors of "unreliable": The '88 Toyota flavor and '88 Chevy flavor. In both cases you know that a major system failure is due sometime in the next year and a half to three years. However in the with Chevy flavor of unreliability, you will likely experience lots of small failures along the way which must be repaired to make the car drivable. This is not what you want. There are cars out there that will move under their own power for a year or so with out requiring endless repair. The trick is finding one.
Buy your new bucket of bolts privately! Do NOT buy a cheap car from any dealer! A dealer will not know any of the mechanical history of the car. You are looking for a car that has been owned by the same person for the last 5 year. They will be familiar with its quirks and will gladly tell you about them. The car should be able to pass inspection when you buy it. Ask the owner if he has had the timing belt changed. This should be done at about 90,000 miles on most cars. A good place to look is within your family and circle of friends. Odds are that the brother of someone you know personally is looking to get rid of their old dented Toyota since they just leased a new Jetta.
"I want something that looks nice." Clearly you have not yet realized the creative freedom afforded by owning a sub $1000 car. You're in grad-school right? It's supposed to make a statement. You don't have to transport any corporate types yet so enjoy yourself. Sticker the hell out of that thing! Make it a rolling monument to Greenpeace. Answer the question: How many "Girls Kick Ass" stickers will fit on the right rear quarter panel? Better yet explore the your new found creative freedom with spray paint.
There are other freedoms gained by owning Toyota P.O.S. (Piece Of Shit) Have you ever had the urge to run over, or in to something? When your car is worth less than your Bike it takes on a certain toughness not available in shiny leased Jettas. Remember the last time you found yourself not parking next to the rust bucket because you were afraid you might get your door dinged, now you've got the rust bucket! You will never pass up any parking spot out of fear for your paint job.
We all hope to arrive at a level of finincial solvency which would allow us to pay cash for latest Geman Wundermobile. I hope I'll be there someday. In the mean time I'm enjoying the luxuries afforded by owning a 1988, rusty, dented, wonderful, Toyota MR 2.
Priorities
*Life is ironic… I originally wrote this little tear in 1999, now in February of 2003 I find myself driving a leased 2002 Jetta Wagon ($219/mo) I do miss that beat MR2.
**Life is STILL ironic. That Jetta Wagon worked out ok. I wiggled out from under it with $1700 loss, which is about as good as you can expect after driving a "new" car for only 2 years. I'm back to driving "paid for" cars. I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon as my Honda POS is running like a champ. (2007)
