After an exhaustive search, Ted Laturnus’ daughter bought a 2001 Honda Civic.
Earlier this month, I got the chance to take my own advice and put my money where my mouth is.
My youngest daughter, who has just given birth to a bouncing baby girl (yes, that officially makes me a grandpa), needs something sensible, with back door/seat access and a decent-sized trunk. Her cool, but impractical two-door BMW coupe has to go and it fell to me to get an appropriate family hauler. Budget: $5,000 max.
Here are some of the cars we checked out.
2000 BMW 320i
I drove one of these new – BMW's E46 model – back in the day, and loved it because of its taut handling/braking and that slick little inline-six. However, the years have not been kind to this model and its transmission, in particular, has turned out to be highly unreliable. These cars are also terrifyingly expensive to fix. This particular car had 210,000 kilometres on the clock, and looked good from a distance, but was afflicted with a check engine light that wouldn't shut off, needed front struts and an air conditioning recharge, and smelled bad because the owner had two Rottweiler dogs. He wanted $2,800. We passed.
Honda CR-V
We actually looked at two. The first, a 1997 model, had a massive front-end clunk, high mileage (280,000 km) and "grindy" brakes. Plus – and this is the important bit – it was being sold by a "friend" of the owner, who was temporarily out of town. He was asking $3,200. Well, you can ask anything you want, but uh-uh.
The second was a 2003, asking price $3,700, with 180,000 km and, overall, in decent nick. But the car was still registered in Ontario, and needed to be safety inspected out here in B.C. before it could be registered and plated. As well, the owner was never available whenever I called, and I played phone-tag for several days with this guy. If there's a textbook way how not to sell a car, this was it.
1998 Volvo V70
Asking price, $4,200. Another Ontario car, driven out west when its owner moved here to take a new job. High mileage but with a meticulous repair/maintenance record kept by its school principal owner. However, it also had a broken power seat adjuster, an erratic automatic transmission, and just felt loose and used. Loved the maintenance records, and it ran okay, but, again, like all European cars, these can be like a runaway train when it comes to repairs. With more than 300,000 km under its belt, that scenario is likely just around the corner. Thanks but no thanks.
2001 Honda Civic
Broke my own rule on this one and found it at a Kia dealership. Normally, I avoid these places like a Ben Stiller movie, but by now we were getting desperate and I was considering just getting her a new car. Parked up beside the showroom was a Canadian-made Civic DX that had "just come in" as a trade-in and hadn't even been detailed yet. It wasn't perfect – a little scratched up, and the SRS light wouldn't shut off, but these are both easily fixed, and it had comparatively low mileage – 122,000 km – and a spotless interior. It was also an odd duck, with air conditioning and an automatic transmission, but wind-up windows. Drove it around the block, it ran like a clock and felt tight. Most importantly, she liked it.
We have a winner. Price: $3,900 before taxes.
So what did we learn?
Firstly, the used-car market is more of a contact sport than it used to be; full of con artists, smoothies, carpetbaggers, excuse-makers, and truth-stretchers. As well, people are keeping their cars longer, and decent, lightly used vehicles in this price range don't last long and get instantly snapped up and recycled by curbers and flip artists. These guys are fast.
And if it isn't quick-buck artists, it's sellers who are trying to fob off a car well past its useful life, with a myriad of hidden problems and issues they're trying desperately to hide. Unfortunately, by this stage of the game, the usual sources of advice: Consumer Reports, Transport Canada, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, J.D. Power, etc., are irrelevant, because any used car priced in the $5,000 neighbourhood is going to be at least 10 years old, and has likely been through two or three or more owners.
Which means that sometimes, hitting the car lots may be the way to go. If your timing is right, you can get a half-decent trade-in at a fair price – the Civic was initially stickered at $6,888 (!), but I haggled on the price, and got it serviced and detailed to boot. As well, you can, for a price, purchase extended warranty coverage – even on a car as old as this one. It's not cheap, but it's available.
I also discovered that what I may consider to be an appropriate choice won't necessarily resonate with a 25-year-old female. Rather than fight our way through high-mileage, clapped-out Civics, Corollas, Camrys and the like, I reasoned, why not think outside the box a little and look at models like, oh, the Buick Century, second-generation Honda Odyssey, Saturn Vue and so on. Cars that are affordable with surprisingly good reliability but are often overlooked.
Nope, she said, those are grandpa cars – I'm not ready for that yet.
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