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Proposed Budget: $6,000-$8,000 (up to $11,000 if really necessary) New or Used: used Body Style: 4 door compact SUV or hatchback design How will you be using the car?: daily driver What aspects are most important to you? AWD, reliability, and decent MPG I currently have a 12 year old Ford Focus that's still in good shape, and I'm not someone who cares about having a fancy car. However, I'm about to move to an area of the country that gets between 40-85 inches of snow a year. I have a friend who formerly lived in this area and says that you really want to have a car with AWD to deal with the winter road conditions. I have very little experience dealing with snow, having lived in the South most of my life. I lived in Michigan for a year, with a winter that got 32 inches of snow, and my Focus did NOT do well at all. My girlfriend had a Honda CRV with AWD, and the difference between our cars was night and day. I may just tough out this first winter in my current car, buy snow chains and potentially grippier tires, and see how it goes. I don't have a big budget obviously, and I'm seeing that used cars with AWD come with a premium compared to the 2WD version of the same car. But does anyone have more experience in these types of weather conditions, and have car models to recommend that I look into? I'd prefer a car with more of a compact SUV/hatchback design, that would support a roof rack well.
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Aug 29, 2012 19:10
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:50 |
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Guinness posted:If you otherwise like your Focus, a second set of wheels with good snow tires (Bridgestone Blizzaks, Nokian Hakkepeliittas, etc.) will be MUCH cheaper and less headache than buying a new car. If you're going to live in a snowy region, you're realistically going to want snow tires for whatever car you have regardless of drivetrain configuration. You can get a second set of wheels and snow tires for less than $1000 most likely. Thanks for the information. I'm going to stick with my Focus and buy a set of rims with good snow tires and see how well that does for me. How long do your snow tires last before wearing out?
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Aug 29, 2012 20:47
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I was thinking he meant "suspicious" because maybe the seller stole the car, and it had custom rims on it, so he took the rims off so the real owner couldn't identify it if he saw it on Craiglist being sold to a sucker.
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Sep 10, 2012 02:47
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Rhyno posted:God drat it. So when are the flower rims coming in?
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Sep 14, 2012 21:11
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LuckyDaemon posted:What would make the best financial sense? At what point is it not worth fixing a car? Considering how averse you are to making any kinds of repairs to a car, and your husband needing to treat it like a beater anyway, I think you should just keep it, IF the costs aren't prohibitive once you've actually taken it to a shop and gotten a full tally. If you do get a newer car, you should definitely considering get a roof rack and a cargo box on the top for your husband's equipment so the next one doesn't smell like fish. You can get really huge cargo boxes, this one pictured is just a medium size.
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Sep 14, 2012 22:43
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Actually, I remember reading a study that showed that people with ABS brakes were slightly more likely to be involved in fatal-to-occupant crashes than cars with regular brakes. It seems strange for that to be true, but I wonder if it's because people don't know how to use ABS properly. It definitely feels weird when you have to slam on your brakes hard and the ABS engages, because it sort of feels like your car is slipping when one or more of the tires disengages the brakes slightly to maintain traction. What you're feeling is the brake slipping, not the tire slipping, but I bet people sometimes panic and react poorly, or pump their brakes to compensate even though they don't need to, thereby increasing stopping distance, since the car is already reducing braking power because of the engaged ABS.
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Sep 18, 2012 02:15
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Weinertron posted:Is Edmunds the best tool out there for estimating depreciation? I know everything that's not a Civic / Corolla / Accord / Camry will depreciate like crazy, but their little calculator is telling me that a V6 Mustang will hold its value pretty well while a Hyundai Genesis Coupe will depreciate off a cliff, while my gut instinct tells me that Ford is selling a billion V6 Mustangs and one would be worthless in 6-9 years and the current Genesis Coupes are pretty good cars with a strong warranty that should hold their value better. I think your assumption that a Hyundai Genesis would hold value better just because it's rarer than a Mustang is flawed. It seems like you are assuming that because there will be less used Hyundai Genesis Coupes on the market, that people will be willing to pay more for it, because they don't have a huge competitive glut to choose from like a bunch of used Mustangs. But that's ignoring the most important thing, which is that the reason Ford sells so many Mustangs is just because more people WANT Mustangs.
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Sep 18, 2012 18:45
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Raxmus posted:What ever happened to getting wagons? Later, it turned out you can have kids, and not put your balls in a safety deposit box. 
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Sep 21, 2012 13:52
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Red Robin Hood posted:I'm kind of excited! It reminds me of when I was graduating high school and the Marines wouldn't stop calling me so I told them I was a felon The goverment registered me (and another friend of mine who also goes by his middle name) up twice for the draft under two names, so we got twice as many annoying calls from military recruiters.
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Oct 17, 2012 17:32
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:50 |
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Does anybody have a personal recommendation for a car shipping company? I've got to ship two cars across the country, and I'm really not looking forward to it, with the car shipping industry's well-deserved lovely reputation.
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Oct 19, 2012 19:11
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