I think my 1997 Mercury Sable station wagon (203K miles) is about to bite the dust. I need another vehicle, but I hate car shopping. Is Craigslist the way to go? A used car lot? Something parked on the roadside?
Looking at Carmax, it seems like their wagons are almost all PT Cruisers. I don’t think I want a PT Cruiser. I need something that can haul horse feed and dogs. I want either a station wagon or a minivan or possibly a small truck. I have a long commute - about 70 miles a day. I want something not too gas guzzly.
I’d go to MSN auto and/or carsurvey.org to look up the models you are interested in. Doing so you can gauge what other people say about the reliability or what may go wrong with the model you are looking into. When I bought my old car people said transmission problems and electrical problems could happen. And in the whole time I had it those were the only problems I faced.
If you are checking craigslist, use this site.
As far as dealer vs private seller, I don’t know. Private sellers tend to charge less but dealers ‘supposedly’ tune up the cars before they resell them. But I don’t know how true that is, I traded in my old car once at a dealership and the dealer said he’d repair the car and resell it. Instead he put it out on the lot the next day w/o any repairs.
Make sure you take it to an independent mechanic for a 100 point inspection before you buy it. And run the VIN at instavin, carfax or one of the other sites.
We really liked the way we were treated at Crest Honda in Nashville. No haggle, open pricing. The site cargurus.com was helpful, too. We found a Civic hybrid that was priced at below market, it was at Crest, and it all worked out well.
Craigslist in my area is ok, but I’ve heard bad things about other areas. YMMV. It helps if you are fairly mechanical and know what you are looking at, but that’s true of any place where you buy a used car from. You can always have a mechanic give a car the once-over, but expect it to be on your nickel.
Station wagons went out with the Reagan era. They were replaced by minivans for most folks. If you are going to be hauling a lot of stuff, make sure you get one that the back seat can be easily taken out. The back seat of our Caravan folds down and makes a nice platform for groceries, but I don’t think I would want to put something as heavy as feed on top of it. On a lot of minivans you just do something like pull a lever and slide the seat and you can pop it right out.
Is ground clearance an issue? Most minivans don’t have much. A light truck will do better in this regard.
The small trucks and small SUVs (which aren’t much different than station wagons really) are pretty good on gas. The big SUVs are the gas guzzlers you want to avoid.
Carmax only has PT cruisers? That sounds odd. You should go there in person and take a look around the lot, though. Maybe they’re just pushing the PTs hard online because they have too many right now. When I went to Carmax there was a *huge *variety of vehicles (including a smallish v4 pickup truck that might be exactly what you’re looking for, although this was years ago :)).
If they really do have mostly PT cruisers, though, you could try another Carmax. I got my sedan (which is decidedly non-cruiser-ish) at Carmax, and I was very happy with their no-haggling policy.
You could go through Craigslist, but only if you don’t need to finance the car. Private sellers prefer cash in hand (or a cashier’s check) for obvious reasons, and getting a loan approved could introduce a delay in the process that allows another buyer to snatch the car up from under you.
I had a PT Cruiser for 10 years. For its size, it was actually surprisingly versatile for hauling stuff. You can fold the rear seats down, and lower the rear “deck”, which gives you a long, more-or-less flat surface about 8" above the floor level. Or, you can remove the rear deck, and fold the rear seats up so they’re flush against the backs of the front seats, and you have a long floor-level cargo bay (though not quite as long as the first option).
The issue I ran into with the Cruiser was reliability, late in its life. It was a great car for 8 years…then a PITA for the last two, with a continual line of things needing repair (mostly in the engine and front end).
On edit: it sounds like gas mileage is also a consideration for you. My PT Cruiser was a “first generation”, with an underpowered engine. It got around 21-22 mpg on the highway, more like 17-18 in city driving. While my new Mustang has a lot less room for hauling, it actually gets a lot better mileage.
Autotrader lets you select “wagon” as a vehicle type and then you can search within a certain radius of your zip code. I’d use that as a starting point to see what’s out there, then you can vet specific models on consumer reports.
How are you hauling dogs? In open area, seats or cages? I’ve got a 2004 Escape that I’m in love with, and I have the back seats permanently down for my 90# dog, who’s not in a cage. She was able to jump up into the car until she was about 8 years old, and now we use a PetStep. My brother’s smaller and slightly younger dog has no problems jumping in and out.
You wouldn’t be able to fit more than one cage in there, and probably not much of a cage if the seats were up. But you could haul tons of horse feed.
kenobi - I’m getting about 20 MPG for daily driving now with my Sable. I’m pretty well resigned to not doing much better with a vehicle that can haul stuff. A small truck would by okay if it had a camper topper on it.
I can probably pay cash up to about $10K, if I had to.
Brynda - I looked at Crest’s web inventory, but didn’t see anything that called my name.
edmunds.com has a lot of good advice about buying both new and used cars. The Car Talk site has a lot of info on different cars too. I seem to remember Tom & Ray recommending the Subaru wagon once or twice.
If you are looking for a station wagon, I love my Subaru Outback. I cannot tell you how much stuff I can get in the back of that thing. I don’t haul horse food, but I do transport rescue dogs and I can get two extra large crates, a medium crate and 3 small crates in the back.
The toyota matrix is also probably a good wagon choice.
TONS of space, and fairly good gas mileage if you don’t get the XRS (Sporty) version.
Subarus are also great cars, but their mileage leaves something to be desired. I still loved mine though (RIP my beloved Subie =( @ 226K )
this site will help you compare fuel mileage. I Believe it even takes into account the regulatory changeover in MPG testing methodology that happened in I think 2006.
