Looking at what's on the lots today is bewildering - both in terms of price and what you get.
If I'd KNOWN, I'd have built a pole barn and filled it with early to mid-eighties Nissan and Toyota trucks. I'd have added on later to house a bunch of 96 through 98 Cherokees.
I just bought a "new" car after a lot of anxiety...
I NEED to have one good, reliable vehicle ready, which will get me through whatever Mother Nature dishes out, in the event I need to get my wife away from the house (flood, fire, tornado...) or to the hospital - regardless of the weather. I can get her there long before any of the local squads can even get to my house - and they're actually very good. I looked around, talked to people who'd recently bought new cars,... I got VERY discouraged. I felt like "old people" being pushed out on the ice pack to die, until I came to my senses.
I ended up buying a 1996 Jeep Cherokee in really nice shape with only 175k miles on it. I've replaced some very inexpensive and easy to find parts (front axle u-joints, inner axle seals, wheel-bearing/hub assemblies, dust shields and "mud-slingers") on the front axle and need to replace a few more inexpensive and easy to find parts, vacuum out all the dog hair, clean the dog slobber off the insides of the windows and replace the headliner. If you roll the windows down, the headliner swallows your head. Cheap and easy to fix though.
I was feeling guilty about sticking my wife in an "old" car again, but took her to an eye appointment in it and she is in love with this old beast. I rigged the deal by installing a Little-Tree, Pine-scented air-freshener, so it would smell like our first car as a married couple - a 1968 Volvo 144S with a B18B inline four. That one was $800 bucks in 1980. The "new" Cherokee set me back $4k, but I bought it from a friend and my wife is very comfortable in my other Cherokees, so it was still a good deal for me.
Oh, and the young punks slobber over my "vintage," antique car - even one who has a new Wrangler. This one is a two-door, which makes it easy to get her in and out of and gets a lot of ogling when I drive it. My students marvel that all my cars are older than most of them.
THAT was a whole lot of car-anxiety relieved when I just owned up to the fact that stuff made a few/several decades ago still serves my needs much better than anything made in than last decade and for a LOT less money. I feel like I'm getting over on "the man," "the system," whatever it is that's corralling us into a yoke of spiraling debt and dependency, just for the right to exist/take up space/suck air, when I drive my old "junk." Actually, they run pretty damned well and are solid transportation, so when I say "junk," I'm just being facetious.
I'm HAPPY! To HELL with new cars!
If I'd KNOWN, I'd have built a pole barn and filled it with early to mid-eighties Nissan and Toyota trucks. I'd have added on later to house a bunch of 96 through 98 Cherokees.
I just bought a "new" car after a lot of anxiety...
I NEED to have one good, reliable vehicle ready, which will get me through whatever Mother Nature dishes out, in the event I need to get my wife away from the house (flood, fire, tornado...) or to the hospital - regardless of the weather. I can get her there long before any of the local squads can even get to my house - and they're actually very good. I looked around, talked to people who'd recently bought new cars,... I got VERY discouraged. I felt like "old people" being pushed out on the ice pack to die, until I came to my senses.
I ended up buying a 1996 Jeep Cherokee in really nice shape with only 175k miles on it. I've replaced some very inexpensive and easy to find parts (front axle u-joints, inner axle seals, wheel-bearing/hub assemblies, dust shields and "mud-slingers") on the front axle and need to replace a few more inexpensive and easy to find parts, vacuum out all the dog hair, clean the dog slobber off the insides of the windows and replace the headliner. If you roll the windows down, the headliner swallows your head. Cheap and easy to fix though.
I was feeling guilty about sticking my wife in an "old" car again, but took her to an eye appointment in it and she is in love with this old beast. I rigged the deal by installing a Little-Tree, Pine-scented air-freshener, so it would smell like our first car as a married couple - a 1968 Volvo 144S with a B18B inline four. That one was $800 bucks in 1980. The "new" Cherokee set me back $4k, but I bought it from a friend and my wife is very comfortable in my other Cherokees, so it was still a good deal for me.
Oh, and the young punks slobber over my "vintage," antique car - even one who has a new Wrangler. This one is a two-door, which makes it easy to get her in and out of and gets a lot of ogling when I drive it. My students marvel that all my cars are older than most of them.
THAT was a whole lot of car-anxiety relieved when I just owned up to the fact that stuff made a few/several decades ago still serves my needs much better than anything made in than last decade and for a LOT less money. I feel like I'm getting over on "the man," "the system," whatever it is that's corralling us into a yoke of spiraling debt and dependency, just for the right to exist/take up space/suck air, when I drive my old "junk." Actually, they run pretty damned well and are solid transportation, so when I say "junk," I'm just being facetious.
I'm HAPPY! To HELL with new cars!
