cool! treat it like a rented mule.

look in the spare tire well to make sure there's no rust. your mechanic will check the undercarriage, seals, CV boots, struts, etc. A car that old with one owner says 'little old lady' . I hope it passes the tests. looks like a nice car. pre-congrats.

Mechanic said it was good.

Brakes are at about 25% and will need new pads and turn the rotors in a few thousand miles. Will pass inspection though.
The spare is flat, but looks brand new (full sized!)
Passenger wiper blade needs to be replaced.
Screw in rear tire tread. Probably can be plugged.

Nothing major wrong.

It's sitting in our driveway right now. Sneaky salesman. Letting us take it home so we'll grow to love it.

So do you want to come down and negotiate for us tomorrow morning? It's totally out of both of our personalities.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that the radio stations were preset to 1-NPR 2- Classical 3-Classical 4-Talk 5-Oldies (80's music) and 6-another 80's station. Would the salesmen go through the trouble of presetting the stations to make it seem like an old lady had this car?

There were two Hershey Kisses under the jack, and some spilled clean kitty litter. I wonder if that was for traction, or spilled groceries.

Our daughter is unimpressed with the car. She liked the minivan.

isn't that called the "pet shop close"?

no, but that's a really good idea!

kitty litter might have been from her 37 cats! is there any pet smell or mildew noticeable?


and, it's ok if you don't negotiate. $7500 is a fair price. There is a certain amount of peer pressure that people apply when they hear that someone bought a car. and a good bit of monday morning quarterbacking goes on too.

If you like the car, buy it. maybe you can use the mechanical issues as negotiating chips. that may be more comfortable for you. the car has to have a working spare to pass inspection. demand a new full spare, a fixed or replaced tire where the screw is, and 2 new wiper blades.

when there is a trade involved, it's called 'de-horsing' them.

and yes, it's an effective tactic. and it's working right now. glatt is taking mental ownership, or at the very least, he's visualizing it. his neighbors will see it, he has told his friends about it.... these people would be disappointed if he gave it back. 75% of the time, it works every time.

unless there is something really really wrong about the car.

There is a little pet hair here and there in the car, but absolutely no smell of pet, no mildew, and no stains. We showed up unannounced and jumped into the car and closed the doors right away so it wouldn't have a chance to air out. It didn't smell bad at all. And after testing out the windows, we drove around with the windows closed and recirculating the air. No odors.

Most places suggested making appointments, and I could imagine the salesmen opening all the windows of the car you planned to drive and fanning it out to get rid of any smell, so I wanted to always show up unannounced. I've got a very sensitive nose, and it passed muster with me.

awesome!

I hope it serves you well!

That's our problem too.

Minivan is at the dealer, beest away for the weekend so we'll drive it and do the deal Monday assuming all is well.

I offered $6500.

They countered with my choice of $6900 As Is, or the full $7500 and they fix all my complaints, including the brakes.

I went with the $6900 because I don't want to make another trip down there to pick the car up after the work is done. It's only 10 miles away, but traffic there is a nightmare. It's about an hour's drive.

They filled the spare with air and topped off the gas tank. With tax, tags, etc. it came to around $7400.

Thanks for all your help, Jim! I'm going to hit the Cellar tip jar in your name.

We've got a second car now, with about half the mileage of our first car. Sweet! Already, the kids are asking if it can be our designated road trip car. More spacious and comfy.

:lol2:

Glatt, I know every time you go somewhere you'll take the car that gets twice the mileage if possible. But instead of thinking half or twice the mileage, work out some numbers.
After you've determined what kind of mileage you're actually getting, figure what the difference between them is in dollars for say, 10 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles. It may not be as big as you think.

There has been an ongoing back and forth on my truck forum. Two engines, the smaller 300hp uses regular gas, the larger 400hp uses premium. These guys will argue the advantage of one or the other ad infinitum.

So I figured a difference between the regular and premium seems to hold at about 25 cents, and both engines are averaging about 20 mpg (yeah, same mileage), so the bottom line for the larger engine is about $12.50 for a thousand fucking miles. They still argue. :lol:

Of course these numbers don't pertain to you, but looking at the money puts it in a different perspective.

I feel the same way about gas prices. Drives me crazy when people obsess over a few cents here and there in gas, which adds up to effectively nothing in the long-term, yet can't break themselves of a weekly movie rental or pizza delivery habit that costs 30 times that.

I realize I used the wrong word in my post. I said "mileage" but what I meant was the miles on the odometer. I meant to say I'm happy we got a car with really low miles for its age and price.

It's true that the Camry isn't as fuel efficient as the Prizm, but it's not that bad at all. I'm happy with it. It's better than most cars out there. And we'll definitely pay attention to the fuel efficiency for at least the first several tanks. I want to get to know this car. Already, it's the car closest to the street and is getting the most use.

A winnar is you.

Conglattulations!

Nevermind. :blush:

I never posted a picture. This is what our driveway looks like now. The Geo Prizm is parked in and the "new" Camry is getting all the use now.

:)
Attachment 40900

shiny!

Let the name-guessing commence. :D

Attachment 40914

SPARTACUS!

nope. but that's good..... We could change it......

oh wait, no, I'm Spartacus.

A friend in high school named his bright red car Ruby. But you said it was a "he," so that can't be right...

Ooh, I'm gonna guess the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Old Blue?

Red Rover

Ruby?

A Red Renault 5 in the UK in the late 80s was like a white F150 or Silver Odyssey in the US today.

So mine was called clit, because it was red every cunt had one.....

and no to all so far....

Brits may have an advantage -shame they're all asleep right now....

Red rover red rover
Send monster right over

Oh, I'm sure I'm wrong then. :)

It's a very nice automobile!

Ginger

ha! ...no

Rodney.

I just think it looks like a Rodney.

no.

It now has two names :rolleyes:

Dodgy?

Would have been if Hector had named it :lol:

(not very imaginative in the pet and stuffed toy naming department, that one)

Chitty chitty bang bang?

Big Ben?

Carrie Van Nozzlestroff?

The Red Menace?

Strawberry Fields?

Marcus Welby, MD?

The middle one is warm.

Red Rover?

Or the phantom menace. ;)

Roger the Dodger (From the Brit kids Comic The Beano, home of the British Dennis the Menace)

or

Jammie Dodger (yummy Brit biscuit with red jammy bit)

And I'm also very tempted to add black stripes to make it a menace car -still called roger the dodger (Dennis the Menace in the Beano wears red and black stripes -not sure if your blonde Dennis does....)

Another car buying question.

We bought our Camry about 3 years ago, as detailed in this thread, and it's had an extremely intermittent rough idle/stalling problem for the last two years or so. I've tried different things to fix it, but haven't been able to figure out the problem. So while I love the car in many ways, I also fucking hate the thing. Bottom line is I don't trust it and every road trip is stressful, even when I get to my destination just fine.

So that brings me to my question. Our next door neighbor is literally a little old lady who drives very seldom. She recently made the transition to a nursing home, and her children said they will be selling her car soon.

It's a 2009 Honda Accord (VIN 1HGCP26829AU12666)
With only 8k miles on it! Looks like leather seats, but I'm not sure. Needs new tires (admitted to us offhand by her adult child who backed into a curb and had to replace one of them and was told by the shop that it needed all new tires.)

She's probably never taken it on the highway. So it's had a ton of local, short trips at very slow speed. (not ideal) It looks like it's in great condition, except it has half a dozen small scuffs all around the perimeter (consistent with a little old lady having trouble in a parking lot.) I don't know if she's changed the oil in those 5 years. She has slowed down physically in the last 2 years or so, so it's very possible that the oil hasn't been changed in around 2 years/2,000 miles.

I haven't expressed interest in it yet to the potential sellers, but we have a good relationship with them, and I'm sure they would sell it to us if we showed interest.

We haven't even test driven it, so I don't even know if we like it. And of course we would ask for any maintenance records and have a mechanic take a look at it. Actually, the mechanic we would use is also her mechanic, so they would have a record of it.

So the question is, should we buy this car, and if so, what should we offer? We want to offer a fair price.

2009 Hondas like this go for about $10K on cars.com, but they have 90K miles.

On NADA, they give this information:
Attachment 51785

Car values are opinions. That's a rare age/mileage combo, so it will be difficult to find comparable vehicles that have sold at auction. The mileage add on NADA is WAY too high. Can you get the VIN?

VIN is 1HGCP26829AU12666

check that. usually the last 6 will be numeric ( except ford for some reason)

comes back invalid VIN

it seems to work here?

Not the greatest picture, I'll admit, but the glare on my phone screen made it hard to see what I was doing.
Attachment 51793

1HGCP26829A072666

anyway: I put a 2 in and it worked. The last 6 are only for serial identification. The rest of the characters mean things. Like 1 is Built in US, H is Honda, etc. the 10th digit is year of model.

This may help:

Attachment 51794

That's what cars have actually sold in this region. The highlighted one is closest, but the condition sounds better than what you describe. I might go 12k for the car if they want to sell it.

Attachment 51795

I can try for a better picture tonight or tomorrow. I cut through their property and walk right next to the car twice a day.

Awesome! Thank you.

It looks like it's in good shape other than 4-5 scuff marks, each about the size of a human hand, scattered around the lower part of the car on pretty much every side.

yabbut, if the tires are dry rotted, that's $500 for a new set.... They're good dependable cars, Accords. A little loud inside compared to your camry and the altima, and the interior quality is usually not as good... But they just keep running.

Should I be concerned at all about the mostly short local trips and probably no highway miles? Or with only 8,000 miles, is that not enough time for carbon deposits to have gotten built up in the engine and not get burned off?

you should drive it. You say you share a mechanic? if hew knows it's for sale, he might bid you up, so you may want to take it elsewhere for an inspection. 8000 miles is just breaking in, but gas and oil get gunky when they get old... so if you do buy it, I'd recommend fuel injection cleaner and change oil, trans fluid and coolant on day one.

I'll buy it if you don't ;)

If this works out, all those days of shoveling her driveway for her will pay off.

We bought the car last night!

Well, sort of. We test drove it and liked it and agreed on a price and they signed the title over to us and gave us the title.

The car is still in their driveway until tomorrow, and they still have the keys, and we haven't given them a check yet. But my wife is heading over to the DMV today to get new tags and a new title and to get it registered. We'll finalize everything tomorrow after the one sister uses it to drop the other off at the airport. Hope they don't get in an accident on this one limbo day.

They gave us the "good neighbor discount" and we agreed on a $10k price. I'm really pleased with that. I think a normal private party sale between strangers would have been closer to $14k.

It smells new inside! And not like a masking cleanser sort of smell. It really smells new. Super clean inside, and they didn't even clean it for us. It's never been dirty. A few scuffs on the outside, and it needs new tires, but is otherwise great. At that price and with that mileage, I didn't take it to a mechanic. It drove well.

We finished off the night visiting with them and talking about their mom and our memories of her. It was nice. Hugged each other when we left. The best car buying experience I've ever had.

It's got a stiffer ride than the Camry and a slightly larger turning radius, which I didn't think was possible. So it will take a little adjusting to the new driving feel, but it really feels like a brand new car!

So once it's in our driveway and all legal, we'll take our 2001 Camry over to Carmax and unload it on them. Probably won't get too much, but we don't need 3 cars and it's just too unreliable. I just hope the intermittent problem doesn't show up when they test drive it.

Congratulations!

But for a few grand more you could have hugged Jim. :haha:

Awesome, glatt. Enjoy it!

Thanks all!

Congrats!

Last Tuesday I took my car for an oil change and a check up, mechanic called me back and told me I had a blown head gasket.
After driving a bunch of different cars and looking at the prices new vs used, I consulted with Jim and a couple others who know stuff about cars.
After 5 Nissans in a row, I bought a '15 Civic EX. Love this car. First new "new car" for me in 25 years.

Awesome!