Chronic Car Buyers Anonymous (Archived)

laurasdada · May 2019

The boy didn't get his summer internship, now I don't even know his plans, when he'll return from OR. So, it appears no necessary punch. Jag turned 55k miles today, I've owned it 65 months. Seems like I drive more than that!

corvette · May 2019

laurasdada said:
Jag turned 55k miles today, I've owned it 65 months. Seems like I drive more than that!

LOL, I was just going through my records on my vehicles and, I had the oil changed in the Tahoe in early December, 2018. The oil life monitor (which is the older GM algorithm based entirely on usage and not on time) shows 53% oil life remaining. I've only driven it about 2,500 miles, but most of those are short city trips, which deplete the OLM more rapidly.

The UP trip will put about 2,000 highway miles on the G37. I plan to take another road trip in the Tahoe the following month.

roadburner · May 2019

rayainsw said:
Had a short but interesting conversation with my daughter's neighbor.
He has a pristine BMW 2002tii -
one of the cars I really wanted in the early 70s.
- Ray
Took me 40 years from then to buy my first BMW...

I became interested in BMWs back in 8th Grade(1971) after seeing an ad in Car and Driver describing how their Bavaria could cruise at 120 mph. I didn’t actually own one until I was 26; the rest is history.

stickguy · May 2019

I just checked the RDX this weekend, and still not quite at 54K miles yet. at 80 months. It should probably last a while yet.

Michaell · May 2019

stickguy said:
I just checked the RDX this weekend, and still not quite at 54K miles yet. at 80 months. It should probably last a while yet.

The Outback has 31,000 miles in 51 months. And, hardly getting driven at all the last couple of months.

nyccarguy · May 2019

51 months? 80 months? YOU should both be ashamed of yourselves!

stickguy · May 2019

my other one is only 5 months. Slacker.

The RDX though I do think will top the magic 120 month mark.

kyfdx · May 2019

83K in 109 months for my daily driver. But, I quit commuting in 2016.

Actually, twelve 180-mile round trips to visit an elderly relative the last three months, or it would only be 81K miles.

(The car had 40K when I bought it, so total mileage is 123K)

graphicguy · May 2019

My company provides tech for Apple, HP, Lenovo, HP, and some others. We buy 1,000s of laptops every year. We keep them about 2.5 years. Whatever company offers us the best deal on thing like laptops, is the company we use. HINT.....it’s never Apple.

So, being an Apple guy (MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad) for my personal use, I have one foot in Apple’s ecosystem and one foot in Windows. Every once in a while I’ll get crossed up in the function of one or the other, but I amaze myself how I can jump from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

To add to the cross platforms, my business phone is an Android. My personal phone is the afore mentioned iPhone.

Any new car I buy from here on will HAVE TO HAVE both Android and iOS integration.

Sandman6472 · May 2019

Still doing about 13K/year and that will remain the same until I retire. Still like what I do but the getting up part is the issue. Driving all these great vehicles on someone else's dime is great and can deal with the Miami traffic as I get paid by the hour. And since I'm starting to get serious about replacing the Golf, the variety of vehicles I'm driving might show me some not even on my radar. As of now, the Hyundai Revue is in the number 1 slot on my short list but every time I see a Elantra GT hatch, I like it. Still have to get over there to test the Kona but that'll probably be next week some time. The pain doc canceled on me so moved the oil change up to noon from 3 pm. And the front door of the Golf has been behaving that I'll probably just cancel next Tuesday's appointment and see how things play out.
Since the Revue won't be out till the fall, I'd want to wait till then anyways as I won't go through that buyers remorse scenario again like I did with the 2014 Tucson. Once was more than enough to be honest. And I doubt I'll get any flack from the better half whenever I do replace the Golf as it's already been in the stable over 4 years and she agrees with me, when any of our vehicles starts having issues or leaves us stranded more than a couple of times, time to replace it. And a guy at work knows I like to be in a warranty situation and he's pushing leasing like they did with their 2018 Civic. But not sure leasing is for us.

laurasdada · May 2019

I"ve worked with a gentleman for almost all of my 21 years at my current company. He is not a car guy, don't think he's ever bought new. He buys high mileage, basic transportation for reasonable $. He currently has three cars, including an older, basic Toyota Previa that he bus drove our group to lunch yesterday. He has two 2014 and a 2015. My Jag is a 2013. This disturbs me.

corvette · May 2019

Toyota hasn’t sold a Previa in the US in many years... You mean Sienna?

Michaell · May 2019

nyccarguy said:
51 months? 80 months? YOU should both be ashamed of yourselves!

I've had the Jetta 33 months and just under 16,000 miles.

The MINI is 61 months old with 38,000 miles

We just aren't driving much, and don't really need 3 cars.

pensfan83 · May 2019

Just made the 21st payment on the Acura today. If my current driving habits hold up I'll be under my mileage allotment by about 11-12K come September 2020. The Nissan turns 5 next month and is closing in on 70K, still runs well so no urgency to unload at this point. The Prelude has 188K but will only get a few thousand/year at most since it's stored 4.5 months/year.

henryn · May 2019

graphicguy said:
My company provides tech for Apple, HP, Lenovo, HP, and some others. We buy 1,000s of laptops every year. We keep them about 2.5 years. Whatever company offers us the best deal on thing like laptops, is the company we use. HINT.....it’s never Apple.

So, being an Apple guy (MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad) for my personal use, I have one foot in Apple’s ecosystem and one foot in Windows. Every once in a while I’ll get crossed up in the function of one or the other, but I amaze myself how I can jump from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

To add to the cross platforms, my business phone is an Android. My personal phone is the afore mentioned iPhone.

Any new car I buy from here on will HAVE TO HAVE both Android and iOS integration.

As I've explained before, I hold a grudge against Apple and will not use any of their products. At least not as long as I have any choice in the matter.

Fortunately, it isn't required for work. Apple has almost no presence in the corporate world, pretty much by their own choice. Since I un-retired in 2010 I have been working with and supporting petrophysical software running under RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). The last 2 years, we have started using more and more petrophysical software running under Windows. Which in my opinion is a mistake. Jobs that run for days at a time, requiring massive cpu power and huge amounts of memory, are going to work better under a real OS, but they never asked me, so I support whatever they pay me to support.

Switching back and forth, many times per day, from Windows to Unix is a lot of fun, but I'm getting used to it. A lot of the software runs under both environments, so I'm constantly asking, "Are you having that problem under Windows or Unix?" Trying to do remote troubleshooting for Windows is a lot harder than for Unix, I will say that.

au1994 · May 2019

@pensfan83 - wow! Time flies. It seems like just yesterday when you were pursuing the Acura.

The Subaru has ~6k miles since late December and the X1 has ~23k miles since August of 2017.

It probably make more financial sense for us to have one car payment and me to have something paid for to make my once a week office trip and misc errands. Let my wife take the other car as her DD and our hauler to the lake and back. We’re underwater on the X1 so that’s not gonna happen anytime soon!

Michaell · May 2019

au1994 said:
@pensfan83 - wow! Time flies. It seems like just yesterday when you were pursuing the Acura.

The Subaru has ~6k miles since late December and the X1 has ~23k miles since August of 2017.

It probably make more financial sense for us to have one car payment and me to have something paid for to make my once a week office trip and misc errands. Let my wife take the other car as her DD and our hauler to the lake and back. We’re underwater on the X1 so that’s not gonna happen anytime soon!

We are going to drop to one car payment shortly, when the Jetta goes back this summer, and we are looking at options to pay off the Subaru sooner rather than later (21 payments left, IIRC). Daughter is looking to do the same with the MINI, as well (less than 12 payments on it)

We could very well be a no car payment household!

henryn · May 2019

nyccarguy said:
51 months? 80 months? YOU should both be ashamed of yourselves!

Cars do last longer than when we were young. Well, when I was young, anyway. While there are a few on here older than myself (68), there are also many younger. And those younger ones probably don't remember when a car was considered completely used up by the 100k mark.

Earlier this year, I was giving serious consideration to paying $15k for a used Infiniti M37 with 105k miles. My younger self would have been totally dumbfounded at the thought that anyone would ever pay $15k for ANY car with over 100k miles. Things do change.

pensfan83 · May 2019

au1994 said:
@pensfan83 - wow! Time flies. It seems like just yesterday when you were pursuing the Acura.

The Subaru has ~6k miles since late December and the X1 has ~23k miles since August of 2017.

It probably make more financial sense for us to have one car payment and me to have something paid for to make my once a week office trip and misc errands. Let my wife take the other car as her DD and our hauler to the lake and back. We’re underwater on the X1 so that’s not gonna happen anytime soon!

As a reminder of how time flies at the time of purchase I had one child that just started 1st grade and one entering pre-school and now I have a soon to be 3rd grader and a kindergarten graduate. Sigh.

henryn · May 2019

Michaell said:

We could very well be a no car payment household!

As I am getting ready for retirement, I consider any kind of debt to be a bad thing. It does seem like every time I purchase a new car or truck, the manufacturer has some kind of financing incentive, so I temporarily go into debt in order to get that incentive. Usually $750 or more, so well worth the trouble. Then I wait 91 days and pay it off.

I can well remember when I was younger, financing was a really important part of any car buying decision. My first new vehicle purchase was an '89 F150. I got a promotion at work, I did the math and was going to clear nearly $300 more a month in take home pay. Two days later I was the proud owner of my first new car (truck), payments of $289 a month. I think I appreciated that promotion more than any other I ever received, as I could point to my new truck and say, "That was my promotion/raise!"

au1994 · May 2019

Michaell said:

au1994 said:
@pensfan83 - wow! Time flies. It seems like just yesterday when you were pursuing the Acura.

The Subaru has ~6k miles since late December and the X1 has ~23k miles since August of 2017.

It probably make more financial sense for us to have one car payment and me to have something paid for to make my once a week office trip and misc errands. Let my wife take the other car as her DD and our hauler to the lake and back. We’re underwater on the X1 so that’s not gonna happen anytime soon!
We are going to drop to one car payment shortly, when the Jetta goes back this summer, and we are looking at options to pay off the Subaru sooner rather than later (21 payments left, IIRC). Daughter is looking to do the same with the MINI, as well (less than 12 payments on it)

We could very well be a no car payment household!

I’d love to get down to one payment but it just wouldn’t work right now. In order to do this successfully we’d need a bigger SUV. The past 2 weekends due to schedules and amount of “stuff” to get up there, we’ve had to take both vehicles to the lake. I don’t like burning that much gas or putting miles (150 round trip) on both vehicles. We’re still in move in mode so hopefully the amount of stuff going up is about to reduce to just our bags and coolers. I’d still say bigger because in my mind how this plays out is me getting something used for cash that would be small or impractical if I could get away with it IE 2dr Wrangler or some other type of convertible so we’d still want the main family vehicle to be fairly big for people and things.

As noted, we’re upside down on the X1 and would really like to hold on to the Crosstrek to turn over to the kiddo in 3 years. A super incentivized lease might offset some of the negative equity but I don’t know. I know they are blowing out the current gen Outback right now. That would probably work, a Ascent would too.

henryn · May 2019

au1994 said:

As noted, we’re upside down on the X1 and would really like to hold on to the Crosstrek to turn over to the kiddo in 3 years. A super incentivized lease might offset some of the negative equity but I don’t know.

A number of people here in these forums were able to get out from under "upside down" situations thanks to the Volkswagen TDI settlement. But I don't think you're ever going to find another deal like that.

suydam · May 2019

We had a Previa in the 90s.

stickguy · May 2019

I’m still mad I didn’t grab the twin to QB’s Jetta wagon. Oh well.

We are holding at one payment. Won’t go back to 2, and hopefully not long before back to zero. Done that before, and it’s nice! Once I get the “good” car paid off (whatever replaces the TLX to become the wife’s car and also the family/travel car), might flip the RDX and get a cheap lease again. Many options, depends where we stand in 2.5 years!

au1994 · May 2019

stickguy said:
I’m still mad I didn’t grab the twin to QB’s Jetta wagon. Oh well.

We are holding at one payment. Won’t go back to 2, and hopefully not long before back to zero. Done that before, and it’s nice! Once I get the “good” car paid off (whatever replaces the TLX to become the wife’s car and also the family/travel car), might flip the RDX and get a cheap lease again. Many options, depends where we stand in 2.5 years!

Heck if Acura does any type of pull ahead program, they would probably roll you into an RDX lease at the 2.5 year mark.

pensfan83 · May 2019

Acura's pull ahead supposedly starts at 6 months ahead of lease end but only 3 payments will be waived. I don't know if this is something that is always available or intermittently.

laurasdada · May 2019

Yes, Sienna. I'm old. I get confused.
Heading out for a long weekend of concerts, gambling and incredible cars at the Greenwich Concours d' Elegance! Hopefully I can turn $100 into enough to bid on some cars at the Bonham's Auction Sunday...

kyfdx · May 2019

We still have one payment, because was offered 0.0% APR for 72 months. I asked if there was a bonus, if I paid cash.. Said no, but if you skip the financing, you lose $1000. ;-)

I'll take the free money, then..

Michaell · May 2019

kyfdx said:
We still have one payment, because was offered 0.0% APR for 72 months. I asked if there was a bonus, if I paid cash.. Said no, but if you skip the financing, you lose $1000. ;-)

I'll take the free money, then..

Free money is good. I got it on my 2003 Saturn L300, all those years ago....

I think the MINI is at 1.9% and the Subaru at either 3.9% or 4.9%

stickguy · May 2019

well, if I was going to pay cash and they offered 0%, definitely taking that. no interest to me means no finance!

28firefighter · May 2019

The Alfa is at 4400 miles after 9 months on a 10k/year lease. At the pace we're driving, it'll have less than 12k before the lease goes back in 15 months.

The BMW is at 25k miles of 36k allowed with 6 months to go.

Saab is at 109k - bought with 106k over a year ago now.

ab348 · May 2019

henryn said:

As I've explained before, I hold a grudge against Apple and will not use any of their products. At least not as long as I have any choice in the matter.

Fortunately, it isn't required for work. Apple has almost no presence in the corporate world, pretty much by their own choice. Since I un-retired in 2010 I have been working with and supporting petrophysical software running under RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). The last 2 years, we have started using more and more petrophysical software running under Windows. Which in my opinion is a mistake. Jobs that run for days at a time, requiring massive cpu power and huge amounts of memory, are going to work better under a real OS, but they never asked me, so I support whatever they pay me to support.

Apple is not used in many large line-of-business applications in the corporate world as you note, but they are remarkably popular among small business for retail point-of-sale and also for niche corporate applications. When I was working we implemented a Board of Directors system to deliver their board binders to them digitally via the cloud using an app that runs on the iPad. They all loved it, even those who were not particularly computer-literate. I had never seen an end-user group take so well to such a large change in the way they did their jobs. We could never have done that using any other platform.

kyfdx · May 2019

I have a friend who works for a small tech consulting firm, that does system integration work for small/medium size corporations. One customer had a CEO that was enamored of Apple products, and bought Macs for his entire office workforce. He wanted his entire legacy system integrated to work with the Macs he had just bought everyone. Uh... sorry.

(I love Apple products, myself)

suydam · May 2019

I belong to the Church of Apple. Fortunately it’s very common in the academic world where I worked.

xwesx · May 2019

I have never been a big fan of Apple products, mostly because of cost. They have always had their "prestige surcharge" for any of their products, and I'm just not a big fan of paying that.

28firefighter · May 2019

Sigh - deals on the XC90 (which my wife loves) are outstanding right now. T6 R-Design has 4k Volvo Allowance, $1000 for Costco, and I qualify for $750 loyalty for owning a Saab. A local dealer, with some pushing is doing 13% off new.

I could land in a $74k XC90 for about $480/month + tax with MSDs, first month and tags due at signing.

Bad timing unfortunately.

cdnpinhead · May 2019

xwesx said:
I have never been a big fan of Apple products, mostly because of cost. They have always had their "prestige surcharge" for any of their products, and I'm just not a big fan of paying that.

Then there's the never-ending placement of Apple stuff in any and every TV show and movie. It seems to work with the crowd that cares about such things.

tjc78 · May 2019

My love of Apple ends with Phone, Pad and Watch... otherwise give me my Windows based machines please!

corvette · May 2019

28firefighter said:

Sigh - deals on the XC90 (which my wife loves) are outstanding right now.

That’s a great deal, although I’d be interested in the T8 for the cool factor. I’m sure they’re scarce and don’t lease well.

Michaell · May 2019

tjc78 said:
My love of Apple ends with Phone, Pad and Watch... otherwise give me my Windows based machines please!

We are a split household.

We all use an iPhone, and I have an iPad as well. Wife and daughter have mac laptops, while I have windows machines for personal and business use.

When we needed to buy a laptop for the business, the girls decided to go with a windows system, for compatibility reasons.

andres3 · May 2019

xwesx said:
You cannot hand a woman your goose and expect her not to cook it.

Aside.... Did she manage to go the intervening years without a vehicle (time between the Civic and Sportwagen)?

Ah! You caught the one exception to her keeping cars only 2-years habit. She got a '07 Civic EX sedan to replace the totalled '05 Civic EX sedan. We kept that Honda a good while for 70K+ miles and Carmax bought it for $8,000 big ones. That's when we picked up the Sportwagen but Carmax outbid the VW dealership for the trade-in.

andres3 · May 2019

corvette said:
Did you end up having to replace the tires on the Kia?

You might be able to find a lease deal on a service loaner X3 on Leasehackr.

Nope! The tires are perfectly fine, especially considering they are Michelins, and it's a San Diego Summer season until the car goes back. The environmentalist in me says use the full useful life of the tires, and then buy something reasonable that meets the specs and is inexpensive at turn-in.

xwesx · May 2019

andres3 said:

xwesx said:
You cannot hand a woman your goose and expect her not to cook it.

Aside.... Did she manage to go the intervening years without a vehicle (time between the Civic and Sportwagen)?
Ah! You caught the one exception to her keeping cars only 2-years habit. She got a '07 Civic EX sedan to replace the totalled '05 Civic EX sedan. We kept that Honda a good while for 70K+ miles and Carmax bought it for $8,000 big ones. That's when we picked up the Sportwagen but Carmax outbid the VW dealership for the trade-in.

Ah, yes! I remember you sharing that at the time, just did not recall the vehicle details.

xwesx · May 2019

I just bought a set of tires for the '09 Focus I acquired a few weeks ago. $350 all in at Costco. They seem like pretty good all-season tires: Reviews, TW Warranty, etc. I certainly didn't feel bad making the investment, considering that it's been a long, long time since I spent that little on a new set of tires!

xwesx · May 2019

My newest endeavor.... getting the Econoline ready for my son's driving lessons!

I am now certain that the transmission is a C6 (vs. the original '71 tranny being a C4). I am going to go ahead and do that swap out. Also, I found a place that makes a disc brake conversion kit for this generation of van.... and I've always felt like it REALLY needs disc brakes on it! I have drums all around on my C20 pickup as well, and have no issues with that one, but this van presents a whole different set of challenges. If I'm adding up things correctly, I should be able to make the swap all-in at about $500 (plus my labor... and that of my son). We'll see.

I briefly thought about going to a boosted brake setup for it, which would require an electric booster (due to clearance issue on this generation), but I feel like that would strip too much of the difficulty/character out of the driving dynamics. It's not like I'm putting a crate Boss 302 in it or something.

qbrozen · May 2019

stickguy said:

I’m still mad I didn’t grab the twin to QB’s Jetta wagon.

I just came across the paperwork for that yesterday. Still shocks me how much I made on that deal. Wish I had had the courage to buy more than one.

breld · May 2019

qbrozen said:

stickguy said:

I’m still mad I didn’t grab the twin to QB’s Jetta wagon.

I just came across the paperwork for that yesterday. Still shocks me how much I made on that deal. Wish I had had the courage to buy more than one.

Yeah, I could’ve used a couple more of those deals too.

kyfdx · May 2019

Ditto...

sda · May 2019

andres3 said:

corvette said:
Did you end up having to replace the tires on the Kia?

You might be able to find a lease deal on a service loaner X3 on Leasehackr.
Nope! The tires are perfectly fine, especially considering they are Michelins, and it's a San Diego Summer season until the car goes back. The environmentalist in me says use the full useful life of the tires, and then buy something reasonable that meets the specs and is inexpensive at turn-in.

Before you buy tires, check your lease agreement to confirm whether there is a built in allowance for minor repairs, which could include tires. Not sure if they still do so, but American Honda Financial had that allowance incorporated into the lease.

henryn · May 2019

qbrozen said:

stickguy said:

I’m still mad I didn’t grab the twin to QB’s Jetta wagon.

I just came across the paperwork for that yesterday. Still shocks me how much I made on that deal. Wish I had had the courage to buy more than one.

-=-=-==-=-=-=- end quoted material =-=-=-=-=-

Yeah, no kidding. The day I bought mine, I had two deals cooking, simultaneously. I had already driven both, and was negotiating the best deal. While driving home with the one that was the best deal (maximum profit), I got a call from the other dealer, who was now willing to accept my offer. I was "this close" to buying a second one. If only ...

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