Buying a High Mileage Used Car?

[Gatopescado]

Or if you drove it for a million miles and gas was $1050 an ounce, got 12 feet per gallon and hired a virgin hooker to keep track of it all, boy oh boy! Then you would really be out some coin!

:rolleyes:

[Crafter_Man]

Here’s our current lineup:

• 2001 Saturn. 220K miles. My daily driver. Will drive it until the wheels fall of (any day now).

• 2005 Saab 9-5. 80K miles. Wife drives it. Do all the PM myself. In tip-top shape.

• 2000 F-150 truck w/ 4W drive. My workhorse.

Have never made a car payment in my life.

[48Willys]

@Crafter_Man

Here’s our current lineup:

• 2001 Saturn. 220K miles. My daily driver. Will drive it until the wheels fall of (any day now).

• 2005 Saab 9-5. 80K miles. Wife drives it. Do all the PM myself. In tip-top shape.

• 2000 F-150 truck w/ 4W drive. My workhorse.

Have never made a car payment in my life.

Bolding mine.

I did for nine months on a used car. I had NO credit at all, not a bad rating, just no rating at all! I had always paid cash for everything. So, to get a good credit rating, which I needed to purchase a home, I bought a used car on credit, even though I had the cash in my pocket at the time. I paid my monthly payments on time & nine months later, we bought our first home together. To celebrate, we paid off the car.

@Habeed

What’s the mileage like? I know that for new vehicles, the cost of repairs and depreciation is usually less than the cost of fuel. An older truck like that might be almost free to purchase and maintain, but if it guzzles twice the fuel for the same load, it’s not saving you any money.

Example : you purchase a used truck for $25k with 80k miles. You drive it until 250k miles. It gets 18 mpg. At $3.40 a gallon you spend $32,000 on fuel.

As far as gas mileage on the '59 Ford truck. Keep in mind that my truck is used to haul LOADs it is not a passenger vehicle. I have a car & some motorcycles for that. I doubt that many of the new trucks, diesel excepted, can beat the old Ford by enough to justify the added cost.

Now to answer your question, it averages 12.25 MPG in town, & on long highway trips it is almost always pulling a trailer, so it gets nearer to 10 MPG on the freeway. The very few times I have run it on the freeway without a trailer, it gets around 15.5 MPG. These are real world, mountainous, loaded, MPGs, not some test track somewhere in Kansas, in an unloaded configuration.

Heck, my newer trucks did not do as well. However, they had big V-8 engines & automatic transmissions in them. So, as always, it is all about trade offs. Do I want to accelerate quickly, drive at 80 MPH, & eat gas, or can I live with a slower start & a lower cruise speed? Just for the fun of driving this old truck, I choose slower. The better fuel mileage is nice, but not an end all, be all.

Of course, YMWV, Your Mileage Will Vary.

Resale value of the vehicle should enter the equation at some point. I am almost guaranteed to recoup my initial purchase price of $200 at the scrap yard, worst case scenario. I have a standing offer of $2,000 for it now in running condition. What will be the resale value of this $25,000 truck when you are done with it? Certainly not $25,000.