I did what @abasket did and was successful in getting a unicorn…a 2008 Toyota with decent miles that had been meticulously maintained. Our previous unicorn (an older Jeep Liberty from my sister) was totaled in a very unfortunate accident that wasn’t my DS’s fault, and I had been REALLY set on having a good, older, well maintained car that was paid for. So I posted on FB (to my friends) had DH ask neighbors who seem to get a lot of car deals, and eventually found my unicorn from a family connection. I even asked at the repair shop where we had taken the previous car for those guys to keep an eye out!
FWIW, before we found the unicorn we had some very eye opening experiences about Carfax. One shop showed us a Carfax that was either forged or just wrong…I took the car to a Midas and they showed me the replacement parts from a major front end collision, including the hood, that wasn’t on Carfax. We learned after that talking to an industry insider that there are many, many shops out there that will not report to carfax. So we don’t trust carfax anymore.
Midas will inspect any car you are thinking of buying for $40…make an appt though (and in the above example, they didn’t even charge me). Did it during my test drive.
And…when my D went to college far away, we didn’t have time to search and bought a a used car under time pressure. Had problems for a year and then sold it for $200 and my DH leased her a new Nissan Sentra for pretty cheap…I think it might be $150/month or less. We learned here that the Sentra is their most popular car and always has very cheap lease deals. I think we also learned that we aren’t going to buy used anymore unless we know and trust the shop and/or person. That was a very costly mistake.
Oh, I learned the hard way how a much young male driver can ding your insurance. It’s over $4,000 per year to insure S18’s truck with the good student discount, low mileage discount and the out of state rural discount. It’s sickening. I considered unlimited Uber as an alternative.
S got our old Ford Excursion when he started driving. Traded it for a newer Toyota 4 Runner when he started college and he loves it. They were both great cars.
D got our old Ford Expedition when she started driving. I hated that car but she loved it (until she totaled it in hs). She then got a cheap Toyota CRV. She really liked that car and it was very safe (considering how many times she wrecked it!). She now has a much newer CRV and hasn’t wrecked it yet! We liked it and the Toyota RAV4 but the CRV was her choice and it has real-time AWD.
Carfax, Autocheck, or similar services can detect negative information (branded title, suspicious odometer readings, crash history, etc.), but lack of such things that they show does not mean that no such things happened to the car. They can be used as part of initial screening so that you do not have to spend time looking at vehicles with negative information, but any vehicle that does not have negative information from these services still needs to be inspected carefully.
It can be analogous to how medical school admission works. Auto reject any with too low GPA or MCAT before spending time reading the applications and inviting a few of them for interviews.
My D’s S40 has been quite reliable and kept her safe. It you can get it for a decent price AND can find a skilled convenient mechanic who can service it, that’s pretty good.
That said, good Volvo mechanics are sadly not as common as one would like.
It does take time to find unicorns. When I recently needed two new to me cars I first came up empty when I asked family and friends. I refreshed Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, CarGurus and more many times a day. Surprisingly I bought both AWD cars off Craigslist.
When I’m hunting for a good inexpensive car I look for one that comes with dents and scrapes. They devalue the car significantly without affecting its useful life. So what if someone thinks I backed into a pole? I saved thousands. Buying inexpensive cars and not carrying collision insurance saves a lot with young drivers. I know many people care more about how their car looks than I do.
Besides Consumer Reports, Carcomplaints.com is helpful for reliability info. Some cars have wildly varying reliability depending on the year.
You also have to become familiar with when scheduled major work is required. I saw many cars with 90k + miles that required a timing belt $$$$ at 100k. No thanks.
Good luck. The unicorns are out there. You’re smart to start early so you can be patient.
I’ve read that for young drivers the mantra was always buy the cheapest reliable car. It used to be that one big car was not much safer than any other. That’s just not true anymore …auto braking and back up cameras have changed the landscape and for us has to be a big part of the equation.
We own two Volvo’s now. Had two previous ones…one went to 200,000 miles and we sold it to a friend who drove it for two more years. The oldest one had 175,000 miles when we donated it to charity. It was 15 years old.
Just be careful if you are considering a S60 from 2012. Made in 2011. Mine had a full engine replacement at 62,000 miles because of an oil burning issue. There is a certain group of cars that year that had this issue. Luckily Volvo took great care of me. But if you are looking at that year…so inquire about this issue. It’s a known Volvo S60 issue.
Affordability was not an issue for us or a neighbor, but spending little- being practical- was. He found his reliable, cheap used cars for his kids through the dealership he had been going to for years. We had a third car, an original Lexus, H couldn’t part with that was nearly as old as son- with various superficial dents and plenty of miles/wear (think seat comfort…). Son got a new Honda Civic for his first post college job that has been sitting in his parking spot most of the past several years because he has walked or bussed to work (discovered why we couldn’t borrow it on one trip when we later found out he had to get a new battery to move it when he finally moved to a better apt).
Talk to area dealerships about the cars they have for your purposes. Remember that if you are thinking about the weather that AWD is no better on ice- could be a false sense of security with it. You are not searching for the ideal car but one that will do the job for a few years only.
We bought both our kids cars at 16 for around $3K each and they lasted through college and beyond. The trick to getting a good used car is to purchase it from a new car dealer. They wouldn’t risk their reputations by selling junk.
Warning though, for some kids this is a license to ill. If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t buy them cars. They were into all sorts of things that I didn’t find out about until later. I should have kept driving them around both to spend more time with them and to keep them on a shorter leash.
Toyota RAV4 is very popular here as a first car. Not that hard to find one since so many on the road. Also works great if your kid has gear for ECs (cello, lacrosse stick and pads, food pantry donations, etc) but still small enough to park easily.
Just a thought… You may want to put up a flyer on a board in a senior living community near you. Ime, older drivers often put few miles on their cars and many get to a point when they decide they should no longer drive. Great place to look for a unicorn.
We got a Volvo for our young driver. Great safety and not so sexy! He eventually moved on to a Suburu (which everyone in the family loved).
My son wants to learn how to drive a stick. Since he’ll sit in bumper to bumper traffic heading to practice I’m sure the novelty would wear off very quickly.
When my neighbor’s son totaled his first car he replaced it with a $1,000 Honda Accord with 275,000 miles on it. The owner had already done extensive maintenance work on it over the previous 2 years. That car ran like a finely tuned machine for a few years.
Buying pre-scratched and dented is good for HS. Even if your kid is a perfect driver, that car is going to get dinged up in a high school parking lot.
I’ve gotten two cars in the $6,000-7,500 range in the last year. A 2012 and a 2014 Ford focus. Both had around 90,000 miles. New enough that they have good safety features.
The transmissions are quirky. it drives like an automatic but it’s not a true automatic. So there’s a bit of back roll in an intersection on a hill sometimes, etc. When you’re the passenger it feels like you are riding in a manual. Both kids said after a few days driving it there’s no issues and it feels natural driving. Just takes a bit of getting used to.
Related to that transmission, a lot of people hate the car and that’s why it’s cheap. There were some problems with it earlier but I think if mostly been resolved. But a lot of those cars are buybacks from Ford. So mine both came with a one-year warranty.
Not a perfect situation, but the reality is you’re not going to get one for that budget. Those two cars seem to be working pretty well for us. Felt like I got a lot of car for the money. And the hatchback is convenient for gear, moving to college, etc.
I’m glad your particular Focus’ transmission works well for you, but others should be aware that it can be much worse. There’s been huge press on the issue over the past year. There’s no fix because it’s an inherent design defect.
"Many of the vehicles shudder, sometimes violently, and can shift erratically, accelerate unevenly and lurch unpredictably. The transmissions are designed to default to neutral when certain problems occur, which causes drivers to lose drive power. Consumers have filed more than 4,300 complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that include reports of 50 injuries, but both Ford and NHTSA regulators say the vehicles do not pose an unreasonable safety risk. The cars have never been recalled for transmission repair. "
"“Good people tried to make it work. But you can’t violate the laws of physics,” engineer says of defective transmission.
