I don’t like my current car a 1999 Volkswagen Beetle. It seems prone to breaking down, it’s small for a 6’3” person with three growing children. I have started to look at cars, but given the complete absence of disposable cash flow, I am limiting myself significantly on potential cars. On the other hand I am pretty easy to please but the car can’t be a pain to get into and out of and it should accommodate five people.I have looked at craigslist (a free online classified site) periodically to see what’s out there. I, like many others, would like a car I don’t have to take to the repair shop too often and don’t want to use any more gas than I have to. Unfortunately demand for these sorts of cars is high which would seem to create an inordinately high resell value. Is a Camry with 160,000 really worth the same as a Taurus of the same age with 75,000 miles?
Anyway, the real reason I am writing about my car search (other than a very subtle suggestion that if you have a car you want to get rid for a great price to let me know) is the humor I have found in many of the ads.
One funny thing about the ad is the number of horrific misspellings. Do you want a buy a car from a person that is illiterate? Maybe they are the best people to buy a car from, I don’t know. I guess I tend to shy away from people trying to sell their own car and they can’t even spell it. Honde Acord, runsok, to many opshuns to menshun.
There are obviously a few sexist sellers out there as well. “Wife’s Car” or “Woman Driven” appears in ads occasionally. I guess the implication is that women are gentler with the treatment of their car which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with.
Another similar description is “Highway Miles”. I suppose a car driven on a highway should have less wear and tear on it because you don’t start and stop and turn as frequently. I have a few issues with this – one is there is no way to validate how many miles were driven in what circumstances, there are too many stretches of highway in the metro that may have more stopping and starting than side-streets, and finally the underlying assumption that a car with 175,000 highway miles (or some similar high number) has a lot of life left in it seems very questionable.
One I really love is the people who mention where the car is from particularly when it’s from a similar climate. So I guess I can see pointing out a car is from Texas/Florida/California because it wouldn’t have been exposed to road salt (salt near the ocean could be an issue). But some people must think that it is information you are supposed to include. Why else would you indicate a car is from South Dakota, or Michigan, or New York? I was thinking about getting a car that was driven in Minnesota but if there was one driven in South Dakota, I’d much prefer that one.
“She’ll go…” I see this a lot typically in conjunction with a high mileage car that is overpriced. 1997 Toyota Camry $5,000, 165,000 miles but she’ll go 250,000 easy without a problem. 2000 Saab 9-3 $7,599, 135,000 but these are known to go 300,000 without almost no maintenance. Yah – I bet they will.
Tags: Beetle, car problems, car shopping, Volkswagen
