Hi everyone I’ve read through the past few cars threads here and there seems to be a good amount of car enthusiast here. So I figured I’d turn here for a bit of advice
Back story. I used to drive a Dodge Durango When I moved to SF. I gave it to my little brother as a birthday gift. I recently started a new job in Dallas and need to start driving again around 50miles a day round trip. Been using my parents truck and need to pick something up soon.
Budget: Around 7K. Hoping to use David Ramsey approach to cars and buy something around 12k in a year or two. (Hopefully a much newer used BMW, Audi, VW, etc.) - YouTube
Looking at right now.
Looks like these cars in this price range are usually around 10 years old with 100k-150k miles
Rabbits/Golf/GTI
Mazda 3 Hatchbacks
Single Cab trucks - 1500
I’m also considering Japanese Sedans. For price and reliability. (although seem less fun to drive.)
Anything else I should be looking at?
Wants:
Good Gas milage - Our family doesn’t own a car that gets over 18mph. So this might turn into the weekend driving car aswell. Dads afraid of me getting an older TDI, since he’s never owned a diesel car and is unsure about maintenance. But ideally anything over 20 is great. 30+ is even better.
Fairly Low maintenance. Cars in this price range seem to be around the 100K mark and this is when major maintenance is done. Tming belts, fuel pumps, etc. Don’t wanna sink more money into a car I’ll be trading up in a year or two. Which bring me to.
Good resell value. - Unless I fall in love with this car I’m hoping to trade up to something nicer/newer in a year or two.
Also has to be automatic which makes it harder to find certian cars.
Current option on the table:
Right now I my dad has a friend selling a 06 GTI 2.0L (salvage title - replaced fender) with 110k for about 6.5k
and a 01 A6 2.8L with 88K for 4.5k.
I like both of these, just not sure if the Audi A6 is going to give me problems. I has 88k miles which is really low for the year. (just google tells me around this milage is when Audi’s start getting problematic). Salvage titles are Eh. But gives me an option to buy a car I otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford right now.
Any inputs or things I should be looking for?