Is Mileage or Year more important when I have a budget?

[defiler]

Mileage really means little. It's all about how the mileage was accrued.

You can have 100K miles of strict highway use that is put on in 3 years. Or you can have 30k miles of strict rush-hour use in 3 years. Or you can have 3 years of a kid abusing the car on short trips and only have 15k miles on it. In these scenarios, the car with 100k on it is going to be the best bet, and the car with the lowest mileage will have the most problems and be the car you will regret buying.

It's about who drove it/how they drove it/how the miles got on the car. The total number is nothing but a number in the end.

 

[defiler]

A good friend of mine once said he couldn't afford to buy a used car because you never know what they might end up costing you.

If the price is right, what goes wrong with it is merely part of the bargain.

I bought an Olds Aurora for $350 in mint condition, with 168K on it. At that cost, only the engine or transmission blowing up in the first month could make it a bad deal to buy. After that, its strictly money in the pocket, and repairs are just an afterthought. It didn't matter if it ran me $500 in repairs that year, because that still would have put my average monthy payment equivalent at ~$70. Good luck finding a used car at that payment.

 

[shera]

Depends on the make of the car. German cars are much less reliable than Japanese so a Volkswagen, Audi, BMW will be much more likely to have problems, especially transmission related past the 100k mark but Japanese cars should be fine like Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Acura, Mazda, Subaru etc. Best bet is to use USNEWS rankings or buy the auto issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Personally, I'd take a Lexus with 100k miles over a BMW with 75k regardless of model year.

 

[Poohbearsbong**]

Japanese cars become very expensive to maintain after 7+ yrs and $100k. They may have fewer repairs required, but when they hit, they are major. I drive cars until 10th or 11th year and our American cars seem to have more stuff that needs fixing but it's usually something small. My wife is convinced that we should get rid of our Lincoln because it has had 3 things go wrong this year. When i pull our repair costs (which i keep track of) for our Japanese cars she was shocked at the size of the one time hits.

This is a fair point, I overlooked the cost differences between the US and UK where japanese cars are very cheap (comparatively)

 

[Cherdawg]

Too many variables.

I know old cars that have alot of miles with a particular drivetrain that will be more reliable then say a particular newer car that has less miles.
Tell us what car you have in mind ? Or what goals is the car you're after have to meet?

 

[jefferz]

Uh, way too many variables to look at it in these simplistic terms.

I bought a 1998 pickup truck in 2001 for $20K. it had less than 100K km on it. Over the next 7 years it cost me around 8K in repairs. Lame. My current truck I purchased brand new in 2011 for $22K, and it won't cost me a penny in repairs for the duration of the warranty (5 years/120K km).

But I also had a 1990 Jeep that I paid $2K for, unknown mileage as it had a different engine put in at some point, and that thing would go forever with very little maintenance costs.

So what do you need the vehicle for? What model best serves your purposes?

This right here. Many people forget that even though that 1985 Cadillac with 20k on it driven by grandpa and grandma everyday Sunday to church will have a lot of repairs in the future. You'll need to factor in the price of belts, hoses, plug wires, starter, alternator, gaskets, water pump, etc because things go bad over time even without miles put on them.
If you're putting less than 5000 miles on a year I'd personally go with the newer car with more mileage. It also depends on if you're willing to do some of the maintenance work yourself.

 

[Caution]

Mileage.

 

[D3thr0n3d K1ng]

The condition trumps both i would say unless the mileage is super high.