We included these pricier cars in the hopes that the owners would come down during our negotiations. For this debt-free car project, we searched for used cars with a maximum price of $4,500 - $1,000 over our top price. The best way to get a list of viable candidates from an Internet search is to set up a few parameters. But it gave us too many results and we quickly realized we needed to refine the search criteria. At the outset, we had only a price in mind and used this as the basis for the search. To find our car we used three popular online search tools: AutoTrader, eBay Motors and Craigslist. The goal is to help you see that it's possible to get the transportation you need without risking financial security under the threat of high monthly payments and ridiculous interest rates. In monthly feature stories and in our long-term test blog, we'll describe what we're doing and what we're learning. Our goal is to keep the car for one year and drive it 15,000 miles, which is about what the average person drives in a year. We'll drive to and from work, run errands around town and take cross-country trips. Over the next year, we will track the car's fuel, maintenance and repair costs, not to mention our experiences while driving the car on a daily basis. After two weeks of Internet research and test-drives, we went a little over budget and spent $3,800 for a 1996 Lexus ES 300 that we found at an independent used car lot in Pasadena, California. We wanted a car we would not be ashamed to drive. And it's this stereotype that leads many people to purchase cars that they may not be able to afford.īut we were determined not to buy a beater. Such is the stigma attached to cars in this price range. If someone told you that he'd bought a used car for less than $3,500, how would you picture it? You'd probably visualize a beater with mismatched doors and torn seats, riding on wheels that were missing hubcaps. And we wanted a car with no more than 165,000 miles on it.
Based on that, we decided to pay no more than $3,500 for our used car, including taxes and fees.
The majority of people can't do that, and so we decided not to take that route.Īs we researched other Buy Here Pay Here transactions, we saw that buyers were making down payments in the $3,000 range to acquire cars that would not require reconstruction or constant repair. Clearly, $800 isn't enough to buy a car unless you're someone who can handle a lot of DIY repairs. According to one industry association, Leedom and Associates, the average down payment at a Buy Here Pay Here car lot is $792 for a car that's 3 to 7 years old and costs about $5,800.
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