I’m sure that you, like me, are always happy to get a great deal on anything. Dawn is 30% off? Huzzah, no Great Value Dish Soap for this guy!
But a great deal on a car – man, that’s next-level (because cars are expensive, obviously). Even a small savings percentage-wise can mean thousands of dollars staying safely tucked in your mattress. And a super-score on a car is also super-satisfying because a good car gives you so much. I mean, can you imagine not being able to just go wherever you want, whenever you want, hauling whatever and whoever you want? Maybe it’s even a fun machine to drive, and/or it swaddles you in luxury. That’s just icing on the car-cake. Other than a house, I can’t think of a purchase that delivers more utility and hopefully pleasure than a car.
So yeah – getting a great deal on a car matters. A lot. My all-time best scores were my 1980 Honda Accord, a fantastic $500 find (if you’re a Member, you can read about it here), and my 2012 Mustang GT. The GT wasn’t exactly cheap – I negotiated exactly zero dollars off – but thanks to my employer at the time, I was able to get X-Plan pricing, which is fixed and low. No haggling, no muss, no fuss, just a brand-new, Coyote-powered Mustang with a bunch more money left in my pocket – which was spent on tires and speeding tickets in short order.
Now let’s hear from the gang:
Matt Hardigree
Someone sold me a creamy Volvo 240 wagon with 15,000 miles, owned by an older couple, for $2500. It was a great car and was, in theory, a starting point for a 302 swap. I never did the swap, partially because the car was in such great shape. When my wife got accepted to grad school we decided we couldn’t take it with us so I sold it for $2,000 to a family friend with the agreement I could buy it back. That friend sort of disappeared from the radar and I have no idea where the car went. I regret letting go of it all the time and wish I could have it back.
Mercedes Streeter
I scored a 2005 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe for free. Yes, I got it for no money at all. There was nothing wrong with the car itself but with a state government. See, the original Smart Fortwo was never officially sold in the United States, but they were one of a handful of cars some crazy companies went through the work to make legal.
Unfortunately, federally legal doesn’t mean state legal and some states have no idea how to handle a modern gray market car. One of these states was Colorado. While the state allowed my car to be registered with its previous owner for a while, it eventually stopped registering the vehicle because the car couldn’t pass the state’s OBD-II scanner emissions test. I knew these cars were kosher in Illinois, so saying yes to a free Smart was a no-brainer.
Of course I still have it.
Mark Tucker
Easy: my ’89 Chevy K1500, in forest service green. $1,200 to buy, and I’ve spent maybe $2,000 more on it over five years. Oh wait, I forgot, I replaced the brakes during a cross-country trip. More like $3,000 in repairs. Still a bargain.
Stephen Walter Gossin
My best buy is the 230,000-mile Jaguar XK from Jacksonville, Florida that the seller bought at auction, then ditched in a parking lot for two years, untouched. He then found a 4-speed all-original GTO and completely forgot about the XK and sold it to me for $1800. I still can’t believe it.
About 11 years ago I bought a mint 93 Cadillac DTS from an estate. They just wanted it gone, so I picked it up for $1,500. Loved that couch on wheels.
Best deal, purchase price-wise: 1999 K2500. Was free. Was. I’ve got about $5000 in it right now.
Best deal long-term: 1997 Ford Ranger. $350, and worth every penny. After fixing the oil pan gasket and putting on exhaust, it’s been my chore truck at the farm every day for the last 3 years. Ac works, as does everything else. Definitely the best deal of my auto ownership history.
In 2011 I bought a 2004 Ford Taurus, 62k miles…$600
Bought it as training wheels for my crash test dummy, she sold it in 2019 with 193k on it. Only ever did regular maintenance and a water pump, best deal so far.
uhm which money pit should we talk about?
I’ve gotten a couple “free” Renaults, but they were worth about what I paid for them. Technically the best deal I got a car was a new 2020 Jeep Rubicon Diesel, but only because I sold it a year later for enough profit to cover all my costs…so that one was also basically free. If we are talking value for money spent, it would be my 2013 Volt. The battery is nearly perfect, it drives great, saves me a ton of time/money on gas and only cost $1800.
For the reverse of this:
In late 2022 I sold both of our cars to CarMax and they gave me almost exactly the MSRP for each of them when I bought them 3 and 4 years prior. Zero depreciation.
Literally sitting in a dealship right now getting the best deal I’ve ever gotten. Details to follow. My first dealership experience. So far so good.
2018 Chevy Bolt EV LT. ~33k miles. They just replaced the battery with a new one 100 miles ago. It has the 8 year/100k warranty good to 2032 and 132k miles.
$7,295 sell price after all the rebates. I may have won the Autopian.
If you qualify, GM’s preferred pricing (at least in Canada) is hard to beat for a new car.
For me it was my 2005 S2000. Brand new, we got the dealer down to $28.5k.
I picked up a Peugeot 205 that supposedly had a bad transmission, turned out there was a bad motor mount and the transmission was lying on the selector rods. My buddy welded the mount that evening and I ended up driving that thing for 2 years. Excluding consumables I think I spent less than $20 on that car.
A friend of a friend was moving and needed to get rid of a pretty ratty ’91 Miata, I needed a car and he offered it for 700. This was a bit before the cool kids started drifting them and It was a heap so at the time it wasn’t really *that* cheap. The short nose crank was so bad it tossed the ps belt (while crossed up mid corner) and wobbled too much for the timing to be checked, the top was shot so I ripped it out and got a hardtop for the winter, paint was shot so I did the roller/rustoleum thing. It was bad, the interior was mostly broken and faded to grey because it lived topless and parked outside for 8-10 months out of the year and I eventually became friends with my smog guy because it failed 2 or 3 times before I’d get it to just squeak by every time. Still probably the best/worst car I’ve ever had. I daily’d it for years and had a blast, spent most every weekend night hooning up in the hills with a few like-minded friends. Eventually sold it for $2k-ish after life had moved on a bit and I finally got tired of fighting the smog thing.
I worked at CarMax for about 4 years while I was in college. One of the perks of working there was that you could buy vehicles destined for the wholesale auction at cost (plus $200ish). A lot of employees would buy a few cheap-o’s a year with the intention to flip them for a few thousand extra bucks of income.
I didn’t have a lot of interest in doing that, but I always hoped a deal would show up in the back lot. Well, one day I walked out of the shop and saw a perfect little black 90’s Forester sitting there. I walked up to it, and couldn’t believe that it was a 5-speed! As a Subaru lover (owned a heavily modified WRX wagon at the time) I knew I had to have that thing. Beyond that, it only had 56k miles on it at the time!
Long story short, I went to my sales manager and brought it home a few days later to the tune of $2300! I owned it for 6 more years, and it was a tank minus requiring a head-gasket replacement which I did myself with some buddies. I sold it a few years back to a friend of mine who still owns and loves it to this day.
Best car I ever owned to be honest.
https://www.subaruforester.org/threads/project-daily-driven-first-gen.502537/
^ That’s my little build thread of the car if anyone is interested in it
Next door neighbor had a friend with a miata whose timing belt broke at 190k. (service interval is 60K and it was on its original belt). Said he’d take $400 for it to which I replied “you know that’s a non-interference engine, right?” to which he replied “yes, but my wife doesn’t and already said I can buy a new car”. Fixed it for about $250 and drive it for 4 years without any issue other than an electrical short that turned out to be the stock radio. Sold it to a frient for $2500 who drove it for 4 years. After that he asked me if I want it back for free, I just need to pay for the return flight. Kept it for a year, and then sold it to a Lemons team for $1000, but they decided it’s too nice to be a lemon and kept driving it.
All in the car made me about $3000 and I got to drive it about 20K miles.
Hm. Probably my 1989 Thunderbird Super Coupe 5 spd. Paid $3200 CAD in 2000 (IIRC). Drove it for 2 years. Had a clutch fail (the line rusted out) resulting in a botched synchro (I was 2 kms from home, so I had to try clutchless shifting, which I had done successfully in the past). That was about $1500 in repairs. Sold it the next fall for $3250. That cost (plus wear items) is entirely reasonable for two years of a 5 speed Thunderbird SC, in my estimation.
The Scout in my profile picture. I paid $900 at an auto auction for it with a brand new set of 32″ Mud-Terrains and a ratty convertible top. A couple of friends came over the next weekend. We swapped the battery in from one of their trucks, checked the points and fluids, squirted a little gas down the carb, and it fired right up for a spin around the block.
Free. My grandfather gave me his old 1969 Ranger when I got my license, would still have it if the motor didn’t self destruct years later I was a poor college student.
A 1969 Jaguar E-Type coupe. A buddy and I bought it for $1,000 in 2007. Granted, it had been under salt water from two hurricanes, but we were able to part it out and each made about $4k on it.
In 2019, I bought a mint 2003 Pontiac Vibe with under 30k miles for a paltry $2300. I bought it from the daughter-in-law of the original owner. MIL had bought it and literally drove it only to church, the store, and her job as a kindergarten teacher. There has never er been a vehicle that better epitomized the term “cream puff”
It was IMMACULATE. I bought it for my daughter to drive as her first car. She drove it for about a year and a half and wrecked it. She rear ended someone. Totalled the Vibe, even though the airbags didn’t go off.
But even after I paid the deductible, I got $800 MORE than I originally paid for it.
I bought a used 2010 VW Jetta TDI with the DSG for $15K (36,000ish miles on it) and it was like brand new. Now you’re thinking it’s not that great a deal…BUT…3 years later after having driven it over 40K miles Dieselgate hits. I get the gift cards from VW ($500 Visa gift card and $500 VW service gift card) which covered the replacement spring I needed to pass PA inspection. Then I get the buyback offer, for $16K and change. That was the down payment on my Golf R. Then a few months later I get a check in the mail from Bosch for another $700 since they built the ECU. I do miss that car and getting close to 50 MPG on the highway…
’84 Subaru GL wagon with 62k miles, automatic and rusted, but mint interior. Add the $25 for the animal noise PA system and another $100 for goofy paint and vinyl graphics and the ROI on fun combined with extremely low transportation costs will never be exceeded. Beat the ever living hell out of it knowing rust was going to take it, anyway, but it made it through 3 years of that costing almost nothing in maintenance and women loved it. The $23k for my new ’16 Focus ST was a good deal, too, but could never touch that old shit box.
In immediate need of a vehicle, I bought an ‘88 Volvo 240 from a coworker for $200 after it failed to attract any interest on Craigslist. Eight and half years later, it’s still my daily driver.
Similar story to Mark: I bought my 1994 F150 10 years ago for $1000. It spent its early life in Florida as a municipal vehicle, coming complete with a caulked-up antenna hole in the roof. It had ZERO rust which is super rare in Missouri and the legendary 300 inline 6 with a scant 122k on the clock. I have since put a ton of time and about $3000 into it to make it a great driver. It serves as my occasional hauler and will finally pass 150k this year. It was never my dream vehicle but I have become quite attached to old “Tallahassee” and don’t see myself parting with her anytime soon.
My X1/9 was free fiddy on the condition I didn’t crush it. I would never crush a Fiat unless absolutely necessary, so that was easy. My Scorpion was $3500, but that’s kinda cheating since it was a wholesale auction. I could have flipped it that day for about $9k, but I ain’t that kind of girl. The seller had absolutely no clue what the car was and thought they did quite well, meanwhile I was shocked at how I’d stolen it! If they’d bothered to clean behind the passenger seat, they would have found a printout of a valuation from two years previous giving a $10k ballpark.
I’ve not paid more than £1600 for any of my cars, which includes the Fulvia, Lotus Elite, two AW11s and another two Matra Bagheeras. Just don’t look at them.
Hey, I bet they look good from the fun seat!
-other people didn’t pay for my cars: I don’t worry about what they think
I found an incredibly clean 1990 240sx for sale in 2013 for 4k. It looked like it was garage kept its entire life, the car had a full clean interior, clean title, 5spd manual, working lights etc. There was a catch, it had 300k miles and it was running poorly.
I test drove the car and couldn’t put my finger on the issue but I let the guy know I’d offer him 2200 for it. He declined, but he called me back two hours later letting me know he’d sell it to me for 2400. I accepted his offer, picked up the car and immediately started to diagnose the issue.
It turns out, the exhaust manifold was cracked. A used $15 replacement was all the car needed to get it back on the road.