Wow, 41K a year on a Pulsar. Did you have the change-o-matic rear section? Now-it’s-a-coupe, now-it’s-a-I-don’t-know-what?
And I must agree - I’ve made the Pensacola-Miami trip, the Atlanta-Miami trip and even the Jacksonville-Miami trip. Dude, if you live in Miami and the girl lives outside of Florida either fly or find someone else!
Yes, I realize I just used “dude” in a post, but it felt right and I stick by it!
I lived in Virginia when I bought it, then Texas and North Carolina.
Virginia - woman in NC and CT
TX - same one
NC - IL, then GA woman, then one local gal.
I could indeed remove the hatchback quite easily, which I did a few times along with the t-tops to get that windblown look. I never put on that station wagon back, though.
I’ve got a '01 Aztek, bought with 21,000 miles on it, and I’m at 38,000 now about 15 months later. I had thought that car manufacturers were keeping the average milage that they say people drive a year down, so that warrenties run out faster. However, after reading through this thread, I’m not so sure anymore.
See, that’s what irritates me. I think that a lot of people drive around 20K a year or so. But the ‘average’ is only 12K? I mean, I work 7 miles away from home. So my commuting travel isn’t that much. But when you buy a new car, I’d think the tendancy would be to use it more than your secondary, possibly older car. I hate that you would have to say to yourself “Well, no, I won’t take the nice new comfortable car down to the beach today, instead I’ll take the beat up 10 year old saturn…gotta watch those miles”. That just seems assinine to me.
No problem. Why would an individual lease a car? I’ll give an example.
For my wife’s last lease we negotiated the selling price of the vehicle to about $20,000 plus tax, title & license, a total of about $21,750. Our options were to finance for 60 months at 3.9% or a corresponding 36 month lease. The “buy” payment with no money down was $400.00 per month. The lease payment with no money out of pocket at lease inception, not even a security deposit, was $300.00 per month. No contest.
Sure, you counter, but at the end of the 36 months we have nothing. Let’s say somehow we get into another lease at the same price for the next two years. Now we’ve got nothing after 60 months. However, the “buyer” has paid a $100.00 premium per month for 60 months = $6,000 for a five year old car with 60,000 miles on the clock that should be worth $5-6,000. If the market tanks, it could be worse. Why pay a premium for a losing proposition?
It gets worse. Unless the “buyer” purchases an extended service contract (big bucks) he’s out-of-warranty for the last two two years. Fun likelihood during years 4-5 include four new tires, a battery, a muffler, brakes and a tune up (big bucks). Possible exposures include an alternator, starter and shocks. With the lease, if you follow the mileage limitations, you are always under warranty: just your payment, insurance, gas and oil and tire rotations. No repairs and no other maintenance. If you drive reasonably, you should have enough tire and brakes left at the end to satisfy the requirements.
If one drives 12,000 miles or less per year, leasing makes a lot of sense vs financing for five years and starting all over again. I like to have a new car every three years and it’s usually cheaper and less hassle than buying a new one every five years.
Cheaper than leasing, though, is to buy cheaply a pristine three year old car with a bit less than 36,000 rounds and drive it until it becomes uneconomical to repair.