Projects Makes more sense to buy OLDER cars

Maybe with a newer car but with a Dodge truck forget about the gas mileage. HRP

 

For transportation cars I track cents/mile=(what I paid + major repairs - what I sold it for )/miles I put on it. 5 cents per mile is a good deal, 10 cents is average for me, 20 cents is getting expensive.

I like to get the same kind over and over , you get to know what goes wrong on the same type of car.

The Ford Panthers are hard to beat: big, reliable, safe, durable, easy to work on, parts are cheap, every junkyard has ten of them...

(So what's my H.A.M.B. car? A 1964 Parklane, the Panther platform's granddaddy! )

 

the only Ford Panther I am aware of is the Detamaso Pantera!

 

Well my wife's '94 Escort finally had to be put down last year with 487,549kms. She wanted a new one but I told her they don't make them. Didn't matter, she wanted one. Found a '98 with 137,000 kms on it. Paid $.91 per km for it. One minor repair and on the road. I learned on the first Escort how to make them last so this one should go a long, long time!

My newest car is a '02 BMW and it was cheaper to install a low mileage engine in it rather than do new valve seals and guides so that one I'm keeping. No one is helping make me rich so I won't bother to do it for somebody else.

But what I'm really looking forward to is road pricing where's you pay by KM or mile. This will no doubt run through an interface with you car's computer and my old stuff don't have any idea what a computer is so I shouldn't have to pay anything!!!

 

If you look at it that way, vintage cars and trucks are dirt cheap to buy, operate, maintain, and insure.

Some folks maybe can't come up with the ca$h, they want to borrow money at interest and make monthly payments on a new car that depreciates right off the lot. That's OK too.

But it's tedious to listen to them when they think a car is worn out just because it needs a brake job or a muffler or whatever. Let's say you spent $20,000 total on your rod over the last 20 years that's $83.33 a month! BFD

 

If I could find a late 1960’s Valiant or Dart for cheap I trusted, I would be replacing my Thunderbird AND my Grand Marquis and use it as both fun car and daily. OK, I’m lying, the merc would become the fun car and the bird go. Only reason I would do that is because I prefer to be able to do anything I need to in a parts store parking lot if I need to, and based on my experiences with Alabama and my girlfriend’s 1969 Valiant (fun car, she’s hunting a daily though) I would say that that’s damn close to being something you can do that with. Next best thing would probably be a V6 powered G Body from the 1980’s, but those are mucho bucko around these parts because of all the guys that pop LS/SBC motors in them for drag racing.

 

You are right there man. I bought a 2010 Grand Marquis to replace the 230K Buick I totaled in the high school parking lot specifically because it was unkillable and still rode like my Tbird. Would have driven and dailied the tbird if it was running right when I left for college.

 

No payments, but a little bit of my time for maintenance, and the pleasures and memories of the old cars. Can't get any better than that!

 

I work on them for a living, but I don't have to like them. That said I need one for the girlfriend when it's down pouring or super hot (the Studebaker likes to overheat in super hot traffic), but I always buy newer ones at the end of their life for cheap and keep them going for a few more miles. Just picked up another one for her (2008 for $1500) with 177K, should make it for another 80K easy.

Also it becomes almost overwhelming keeping 4 old cars on the road (and serviced) while building a few projects.....you can't go 100% old all the time (for everyone in the household that is). <<<<< that hurt to say.

 

I drive a 1999 Suburban, it's luxury to me..the last driver I had was 1988 suburban for 4 years , only replace a starter , brakes etc....I won't buy new or lease...maybe when I'm rich....ha ha ha

 

I had the (dis)pleasure of driving home a loan car for my daughter while her car was getting body work done. It was a 2018 ??? with all the bells & whistles (I drive a 1971 6cyl sedan as my daily driver), and this loan car had a TV screen, it kept talking to me telling me to "turn left in 300 metres," it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to start it (keyless, although my 37 Chevy also had a "start" button on the dash, so not a new idea).
By the time I got it home, I was stressed out (this thing would beep and lights would flash on the mirrors when you got to close to something), I couldn't concentrate on driving & had to put up with this goddam thing barking at me every 10 seconds, like it knew where I was going! I have never told a car to "shut the fark up" but I had to.
I know I could have "read the book", but a car shouldn't need an encyclopedia to operate it- it's just a flippin' car!
I then thought- that's it- cars have gone way beyond being practical, they are now "how many more speakers or reversing cameras my car has than yours", and if I was to buy a new one (and I'm not thinking in this lifetime), I would have absolutely no idea about what they are trying to sell me, because everything is 3 letters- "this car is fitted with ABS or POQ or SMD"- What are all these useless gadgets? Does anyone actually know what they are or use them?
I'm going back to my nice, warm , bench-seated sedan, with it's carby and column shift, and save my sanity.

 

Agree that the new cars have too much shit on them. All the bells & whistles designed (supposedly..) to make the car safer to drive are more of a distraction than an aid. ABS brakes, well, maybe those are an asset.. until some piece on it breaks out of warranty. I saw a car in my buddy's shop, the ABS master was shot, the replacement at the time was $2700. A nice down payment on a new lease...

Today's drivers have been seriously dumbed-down. It all started with idiot lights in the '50's. People were too dumb to read a gauge, now they are too dumb to hold the car in their lane...

 

Probably couldn't beat a Dart or Valiant with a slant six for reliability and durability.

 

I guess I,m didn't explain myself well. The Wife and I both have newer cars . Yes they will get well over 100,000 miles and will be more reliable than our 2 old vintage cars.I would never argue that point... What I meant to say was(I enjoy my 2 old cars much more) that our 2 newer Buicks. Reliving the old days while driving the old stuff and working on them is where it is for me. Spring can not come soon enough for me here in Mn. Gene

 

Something nobody's mentioned yet is that reliability and durability aren't the same thing – though up to a certain point in history you couldn't create the former without creating the latter in the process. All that changed with electronic controls, and so the new cars rack up huge mileages in very short spaces of time. I'm not convinced that you'd be able to do anything with their constituent parts after sixty or eighty years, though. In other words, the new cars are demonstrably reliable, but I'm not convinced that they'll be durable in the long run.

Sparing your car, the way my dad has always done with the "better" car he's had at any given time, by driving it less is thus disincentivized. The question is, to whose benefit? Today's cars seem to be made to be used ever more intensively, over ever longer distances in any given space of time, or they don't make any financial sense. This is wrong on so many levels.

It's not so much that I like older cars – though I do – as that I have come really to dislike newer cars. I dislike them the way anti-car people do. And I've gone out of my way not to need a new car the way anti-car people go out of their way not to need any car, choosing to live within walking distance of a lot of stuff, taking public transport a lot, etc.

The reasons I dislike new cars are complex and perhaps arcane, and have to do with such things as the changing meaning of material possession, the way the shift to perpetual service-provision relates to growing corporate power, and the pervasiveness of conative alienation in society which manifests in things like spree killings and political terrorism. This isn't the place to unpack all that. But what some have said is true: it isn't really appropriate to use the same word, "car" for the new stuff and the stuff we like. They are really two different things.

 

I dislike newer cars for many reasons; in no particular order, they include initial cost and depreciation; expense of repairs once out of warranty; forced choices of "options" I have little or no use for( which again harkens back to expense of repairs once out of warranty); very little maintenance or repair possible for the "owner" (caretaker? steward?) without dealership tools and computers; operating systems which are designed for a certain and finite lifespan beyond which the makers do not support their products; and an utter and complete lack of "character" in anything except specialist vehicles. Why is this, exactly? Simple. If we get "attached" to the current "appliance" doing our personal transportation tasks, we might not be inclined to trade it in in a couple of years. If we don't trade it in for the new appliance, the makers aren't selling appliances as quickly as they would like. If their philosophy was applied to all facets of life, I'd be on my fourth wife and sixth house by now.

 

This is an interesting point. I've seen this with some of the modern security anti-theft systems in particular, the earlier types that had the special coded keys and the rest of it. You were fooked if ya got a "lemon" because nobody knows how to troubleshoot anything, they just start throwing boxes at it. It is beyond infuriating to have an engine shutdown and stranded because of this BS.

I bet the dealership just loves trying to get everybody's twatter account to "sync" with the onboard computer or whatever it is people worry about these days. Jeeze Louise they've lost the plot completely.

 

Next time you walk by your new car stop and tap the sheet metal(body panel),Yup it's like hitting tissue paper no welding or patch panels allowed...Here in Mn with all the chemicals used to keep roads clear there,s gapping holes in your car or truck in just a few years,the new vehicle you just paid 28,000 dollars excluding interest.. ya and I still have 2 rather new cars we use daily and all my kids and their families have the same thing,so who am I to complain ??

 

After reading a few posts on this thread, I feel like a wandered into the coffee room at the local assisted living facility just before nap time.

And stay off my lawn!

 

This is so true. I bought my wife a new Mustang GT for her 50th birthday. It's stupid fast but I can't imagine keeping it more than 10 years. It has selectable modes for steering, traction, performance and dash display. I can't imagine what that will cost to replace.

 

Buddy of mine lost his key. FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for a fucking KEY. That's a new Edelbrock carb, half a set of radials, a new Walker radiator.... for a god damn KEY. Big bag of fucking NOPE to me.

 

I agree with today's cars being overpriced by a ton, but I also agree that there's a some real bargains to be had in buying used late models. My F250 was purchased for $18,500 as a 4 year old truck. Original cost? $35,600. I've had it for 10 years and it's been extremely reliable. My DD '05 Focus (don't laugh) cost me $2600 and is spotless and runs every day. My wife's '09 Lincoln MKS was a $47,000 car when new. We bought it from the original owner last summer for $7,000 and it's immaculate, comfy and by far the nicest car I've ever owned. How in the hell someone can afford to lose $40,000 in 9 years on a car is beyond me. By comparison, my '68 cost $2800 new, I bought it from the original owner in '01 and paid $7200 for it. A friend at work has a new Ford truck he drives and a 2 year old Ford sedan for his wife. Total cost: just north of $70K. Wanna guess what they'll be worth in 5 years? Maybe half. 10 years? A whole lot less.

 

I've got a worse horror story. A guy I know has a older Mercedes convertible that he lost the key to. It has anti-theft built-in and it seems Mercedes doesn't service the key anymore. What makes it bad is the key is linked to the computer, so his only repair path is a good used ignition switch/key AND it's matching computer. The cheapest quote he got was $3800, which is about 1/3 of the cars' total value...

 

For sure much of the plastic pieces won't survive "sixty or eighty years". Major components, like front and rear bumpers, grills, dashboards, consoles, headlights, taillights, etc., will be so brittle they will turn to dust at a touch. There are a few plastic bits that have survived in some of our 40 and 50s cars but generally they don't.

 

Apples and oranges.
I LOVE old cars, particularly MoPars and station wagons.Love fins, Atomic age stuff.
Love you can fix 'em, that they are simple.
I now live in an apartment, no garage, sold all my tools because of this, plus I had so little time due to working.
I'm retired now, hobble around, not a spring chicken. I love my '10 Mustang GT, it's very fast, handles better than any 60's car and is just plain FUN! Just like the old cars I have owned, FUN.
Why compare them? Life changes, it's not THAT earth shaking.
Traditional is GREAT, I practically am obsessed with history in general, cars too, but they are two different thing, I enjoy both.

 

Durability means reliability over time to my way of thinking. They are inseparable, if not the same thing.

 

That's what I said in the second half of that sentence. Up to a point in history, you couldn't get reliability without building durability at the same time.

The way I see it, reliability is predictable consistent operation. You know that when you push button x, y will happen, because it did last time and every time before that. Durability is resistance to physical deterioration. And, with a specific exception, the only way to get predictable consistent operation is to build in resistance to physical deterioration.

The exception is where you use electronic or other control systems to adjust for physical deterioration instead of getting stuff not to deteriorate.

 

Well my "new" car is an 02 VW Passat that I had a winning bid of 100 bucks on an online auction on and cost me 374 and change by the time I paid the 10% bidders premium, 100 buck paperwork fee and and license and registration. Little bugger drives pretty good and I almost drove it to the GNRS from here last week. It needs a few cosmetic things and a trans fluid and filter change.
The other late models are a 98 BMW 528 that I got for 600 and had to do some work on and the 97 Monte Carlo that I paid 1300 for for my wife and with a fluid and filters change wouldn't bat an eye at taking across the US to Florida in. All theee rigs haven't cost me over 4K total. That leaves hot rod money every month instead of a car payment every month.
I won't lie, there were times in the past 20 years when I would have been far ahead money wise if I had bought or leased a new off the lot box with wheels that got gas mileage. A few years ago when gas was over 4 bucks a gallon I was driving my 71 GMC with a 350 that got around ten mpg. that was around 120 a week to drive to work. That couple of years ate up a lot of my hot rod bux buying gas to go to work.
Still have the GMC and it is in the middle of a Cad 500 engine swap so it can serve as the tow rig for anything that needs to be hauled.
It's damned if I do an damned if I don't drive to work car wise. You either buy a new enough rig that it takes up a few of the expendable bucks but doesn't take up any of the car project time or you go cheap with one that is paid for but in it's self may be a project as it needs maintenance and repair to get you to work on time.

 

You know you have to bite your lip when someone says "Oh, I just had my 2015 XYZ serviced, and it just cost me $400", and they say it with a straight face. What did they put in the oil, Gold leaf? and maybe a platinum oil filter?
Last time I took $400 to swap meet I came home with 2 tons of stuff and change.

 

I agree with this, my old 71 Ford 360 gets terrible gas mileage and I have owned this truck since Jan. 1971. Its only got 107K miles on it but it will never be a daily driver. But I agree with the idea of buying older cars, I swear that I have saved a ton of money buying older cars and getting tons of mileage out of them. Nothing wrong with buying new cars if you have plenty of money to burn; I just wanted other things more, like a machine shop and hot rods.