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Alright so recently I have been looking for a car. Currently I know how to drive automatic, but I am thinking a manual could be fun. First off let me say I don't know how to drive 100%. I just started and probably have about 20 hours worth. I am looking to buy a car though. My budget is $6,000 total. Don't forget I probably need to save a little for the first month of insurance, tags, title fees, all that stuff.
I have been looking on ebay mostly, if I were to buy a car, it would probably be from there. Shipping a car once bought from ebay costs $200-500.
So far I am interested in a 2001-2003 Volkswagen Jetta. I love the way it looks, it gets 45 mpg, and they aren't too expensive.
I've also took interest in the Ford Focus, but no one really sells them. They are extremely cheap, some look good, and good mpg.
Recently a co-worker of mine offered to sell me his car. I asked him a couple questions and everything seems ok. Timing belt replaced at 85000 mi, the transmission died but he got a brand new one placed in it, he burned out the clutch on accident, got a whole brand new clutch in it because it was under warranty from his dealer, and the front axle broke before but got it replaced. It is a 2001 Ford Mercury Cougar Zn. I will post some pics, it looks really nice. The only problems I see with it, is it has no Air conditioning (that's an $800 fix if I want AC), and the front tires need to be replaced. (about $90 a piece for the ones he's using.) He wants 3750, it has 116,000 miles. Normally they run $5000+. I have yet to see it in person or drive it yet because it is still in the shop getting that new clutch put in. He is going to let me and my dad drive it, my dad also knows a lot about cars so he will be inspecting it, etc.
Here are some pics of the car
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs488.ash2/76156_173226522705777_100000552926831_502544_5306655_n.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs603.ash2/155540_173226572705772_100000552926831_502545_3779805_n.jpg)
What do you think of the car he is offering me? Also, what are some other cars or ideas I could do. I just want something to get me around town, and that looks nice. I don't want something that looks shitty or will crap out.
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If you are only interested in driving it through your town try to find out it's miles to the gallon for in town use. Some cars have decent to good miles to the gallon when driving on the highway but a terrible one in town where you have to brake and accelerate a lot. This also goes vice versa.
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total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part..
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On January 24 2011 02:20 Samurai- wrote:
total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part..
That was basically gibberish to me.
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On January 24 2011 02:23 devil` wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 02:20 Samurai- wrote:
total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part.. That was basically gibberish to me.
what didnt you understand ? I have a car for 10 years so i think i know a little of what i am talking about.. specially about the money part.. In the end, you may ignore me if you want, afterall it will be your expense..
edit: well i guess you ll need a life to teach you a thing or 2 in the long run, you are still young afterall so please continue to think i said nonsense  .. Until your father will pay sure, you will feel ok
Gl
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On January 24 2011 02:23 devil` wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 02:20 Samurai- wrote:
total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part.. That was basically gibberish to me.
Hes talking about the engine capacity. 1.6 litre compared to 1.4.
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Buying a car off ebay can be a good thing or a bad thing. Anyone can make a car look good in a picture. Some times you will get a steal of a deal that works the other time you will get a POS that needs to have a ton of work done to it.
Any German car will not be that expensive to maintain, but if anything does go wrong it will probably be expensive to fix. I like German car's just don't like paying for the repair bill.
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On January 24 2011 02:28 Samurai- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 02:23 devil` wrote:On January 24 2011 02:20 Samurai- wrote:
total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part.. That was basically gibberish to me. what didnt you understand ? I have a car for 10 years so i think i know a little of what i am talking about.. specially about the money part.. In the end, you may ignore me if you want, afterall it will be your expense.. edit: well i guess you ll need a life to teach you a thing or 2 in the long run, you are still young afterall so please continue to think i said nonsense .. Until your father will pay sure, you will feel ok Gl
I am not being disrespectful, I am basically saying I am dumb when it comes to cars lol, what you said made little to no sense to me.
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On January 24 2011 02:39 Kralic wrote:Buying a car off ebay can be a good thing or a bad thing. Anyone can make a car look good in a picture. Some times you will get a steal of a deal that works the other time you will get a POS that needs to have a ton of work done to it. Any German car will not be that expensive to maintain, but if anything does go wrong it will probably be expensive to fix. I like German car's just don't like paying for the repair bill.
german brakes....SO EXPENSIVE!!!
gotta love the quality though ^.^
also regarding the mercury, with all the fixes you mentioned you should still be under 6k but with that mileage count i would make sure that nothing is close to going up, look closely for any rust ive had brakes go out on me because of rust and there is nothing scarier than losing brakes on a windy road when you dont even realize theyre gone til your car starts sliding....SCARY
if everything works and it doesnt appear that maintenance will be a pain then go ahead and get it
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On January 24 2011 02:40 devil` wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 02:28 Samurai- wrote:On January 24 2011 02:23 devil` wrote:On January 24 2011 02:20 Samurai- wrote:
total disaster, take a car that doesnt have 10 L / 100 km ( 25MPG), and that Volkswagen Jetta doesnt have 45 MPG but 33 MPG, so ignore it as well..
Look for cars around 6 L / 100 km, and are cheap to maintain,register and low insurance, so dont buy 1.6+ engines but 1.4, 55 - 75 KW is enough... Trust me, car is a money thrown away so maintain a cost as low as possible, unless u have a lot of money, then ignore my post ..
Remember one thing, buying a car is easy, maintaining it is a hard part.. That was basically gibberish to me. what didnt you understand ? I have a car for 10 years so i think i know a little of what i am talking about.. specially about the money part.. In the end, you may ignore me if you want, afterall it will be your expense.. edit: well i guess you ll need a life to teach you a thing or 2 in the long run, you are still young afterall so please continue to think i said nonsense .. Until your father will pay sure, you will feel ok Gl I am not being disrespectful, I am basically saying I am dumb when it comes to cars lol, what you said made little to no sense to me.
then i apologize as well, i didnt really know where to put "gibberish"
I will explain.. MPG you understand, its a miles per gallon, basically how many miles you do on a gallon, but i am from europe, and we dont have this silly MPG but L/ 100 KM, meaning how many Liter your car used when driving 100 KM
So basically its the same thing, different words..
You can use this page to convert between MPG to L/100 km and vise versa.
http://mpg.webix.co.uk/
Next.
You will use a car mostly for town, meaning that you dont look for diesel, but gas. Why ? because diesel engine requires higher compression, so to burn diesel efficently, you need to warm the engine first. Since you will be doing shorter distance, town, your engine wont have that much time to warm up, meaning your engine will have more trouble with diesel..
Or to put it in other words:
"In a way diesel engines are like horses. As they say, you should walk a horse after running them before you putting them in their stall. Or as they say: you don’t want to put them away wet."
Then i went into some numbers..
1.4 and 55-75 KW
the first number is cc.. its basicaly cubic capacity of the engine that is 1400cc. Shorter its 1.4. U can see it written on cars , like 2.0, 2.8., 1.2 etc..
Explanation of what exactly it means is this
"1.6 Ltr or 1600cc refers to the engine's capacity which is the displacement volume of the pistons of the engine. More is the capacity or displacement of the engine, more is the power and provide greater torque at low rpm and the fuel consumption is also more. "
So what you need to see here is basicaly, the larger the number is, the more powerfull it is, accelerates faster at lower rpm ( http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071222111756AA7JB9x ), at great expense ofcourse, more fuel consumption.
Kw ?
its basicaly a power of the engine, killowats.. The more KW, the more powerfull the engine is. Usually when people talk, they talk about Horse power or HP, which is the same, but different word..
http://www.americanmachinist.com/Calculators/HorseToKilo.aspx
Here you can convert between those 2, but for example, my car has 55 KW, which stands for around 75 of horse power.
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Both are ofcourse connected, faster and more expensive cars have more cc, like 2.8 cc, and ofcourse more KW, like 125 kw up, and ofcourse they all have something else in common. More fuel consumption
Ofcourse the more KW, the more expensive is car insurance.. And ofcourse better and stronger the car, the more money for parts that break
So, what do you need ? Small car for town, on gas, less CC and less KW. Meaning you can move around town faster, engine will be gratefull because you use gas, less CC and less KW because u dont overtake and max speed in city, and most of all, your wallet will be gratefull everytime you have insurance, you change tires, since smaller cars have smaller tires, and those are less expensive, everytime you tank, because u ll do more killometers on one tank..
So take something with 1.2 - 1.4 cc, around 55-75 Kw, 13 or 14 ' tires, low fuel consumption, like 5 to 6 L/100 km, and on gas..
Feel free to ask anything else.
edit: for the same reasons i dont like those 2 options of yours, fuel economy is very important, and they are both bad at it, specially in town..
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Alright thanks, I now know what I am looking for.
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$3750 for a car with 116k miles and no AC seems a bit much.
I mean if your dad knows a lot about cars and finds it fine then ok but I would be very hesitant.
Think about how many Miles this car can get up to without a major overhaul to engine or Transmission, maybe 150k, maybe a bit more, and thats only 3 years of not driving a lot per year.
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this is an ok price, at least check it out. Mileage is nice too. You should be able to buy it for around 2500-3000$. But if it's your friend and you know nothing else is wrong the price might be fine. Mercuries are nicer than regular fords, pretty comfortable inside.
Check it out. Tell him you only have 3k and you will still have to get new tires and AC, but you can buy it asap. I'm 100% positive you can get it for 3200$.
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on other thing you might want to consider that hasnt been mentioned yet-
i DOUBT that car is going to pass inspection where you live. The tails are almost completely blacked out, and most states wont allow that because they require reflectivity. I guess it could potentially be ok where you live- but i've had blacked tails on my cars for a few years and i always have to swap them out and remove my tint to get it to pass. Just something to keep in mind i guess.
Honestly, i wouldn't pay that much for a mercury. With the way things are economically right now, if you are patient, you can get some ridiculous deals on cars, if youre ok with the whole lowballing deal and etc.
if you want to get an amazing car that is reliable, cheap to buy/own, retardedly easy repairs, great on gas, and amazing aftermarket potential (if youre into car modding, the aftermarket scene is extremely extensive) get a HONDA. you could easily pick up a mid 90's civic for 2k with about 120k miles that is in great shape- and with a little research, you'll be able to fix anything on the car. I'm biased in this regard- but trust me, they're the total package.
also the whole "he burned out the clutch" thing would be a huge red flag for me. Sure, you can burn out clutches but that only tells me he likely drove the car hard- and judging by the looks of it, i dont think thats a stretch. you always want to go for the cars that have been babied, and then do cosmetics and modifications yourself when youre ready.
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i would inspect the fellow co-workers car and drive it, if u like it , go for it.
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Ok right now I am leaning more towards getting a jetta, which is my beloved car of choice. There is one on eBay locally listed for 5300, 2 owners, 60k miles, 5 speed manual, v6, etc. I am probably going to call the guy and check the car out.
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Good idea on the Jetta.
It sounds like your co-worker abused that car quite a bit.
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Oh man, I was thinking of buying a used car myself. My budget is $4-6k, just want to take out on the weekends to go snowboarding upstate (I live in NYC) or hiking in the summer time. I don't plan to keep it for longer than a year, cuz once I get married I'll probably get a real car. Any suggestions of what brands and year to look out for, and websites you'd recommend I'd dig through?
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On January 25 2011 02:18 happyft wrote:
Oh man, I was thinking of buying a used car myself. My budget is $4-6k, just want to take out on the weekends to go snowboarding upstate (I live in NYC) or hiking in the summer time. I don't plan to keep it for longer than a year, cuz once I get married I'll probably get a real car. Any suggestions of what brands and year to look out for, and websites you'd recommend I'd dig through?
Go on edmunds for reviews, check ebay as well for pricing and maybe even buying. You can probably get a 2000-2004 for 4-6k.
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On January 25 2011 01:54 devil` wrote:
Ok right now I am leaning more towards getting a jetta, which is my beloved car of choice. There is one on eBay locally listed for 5300, 2 owners, 60k miles, 5 speed manual, v6, etc. I am probably going to call the guy and check the car out.
what is the fuel economy ? Mpg ? V6 sounds like bad fuel economy..
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Volkswagen are not good cars, they constantly get placed on Consumer Reports Do Not Buy list because they always have problems (usually electrical), they don't last long, and you'll end up sinking a ridiculous amount of money into them. As a former VW and Audi owner I can tell you unequivocally that they are absolute shit cars and I hate them. I would go Japanese with that budget. A sweet ass 2 or even 4 door Accord will last forever and there are parts everywhere. Much smarter buy.
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On January 25 2011 03:26 Samurai- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2011 01:54 devil` wrote:
Ok right now I am leaning more towards getting a jetta, which is my beloved car of choice. There is one on eBay locally listed for 5300, 2 owners, 60k miles, 5 speed manual, v6, etc. I am probably going to call the guy and check the car out. what is the fuel economy ? Mpg ? V6 sounds like bad fuel economy..
45 mpg with a tdi
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Would a Jetta need a 4 cylinder or a V6? There is one model of the jetta which is the Jetta GLI that has a v6, the others are 4 cyls.
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Jetta is fine with a V4, V6 is overkill for them (small car). GLI is basically the performance packaged version of the regular V4 and will consume less mpg (since it's a V6) although they will handle better
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I have a 2009 Jetta TDI with the auto trans but I only get about 33mpg city. I have gotten 47 highway though
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EPT
