How Often Do You Buy a New Car?

The situation for us has never been the same twice. Most recently we bought a convertible, between my wife and I it is the 17th convertible we have owned. It may be our last car, we are 80 and 81. Altogether we have owned 41 cars over the years, only 3 were bought new. Paid for is beautiful.
 

I use to say exactly what the guys on here said "this will be my last car",then 3 years later I buy another one and repeat the same sentence.

Wonder what the year 2020 car will look like?
 
I get rid of them when the ash trays get full. So far they're pretty clean, so I'm still driving this '05 Envoy.

I usually stick to GMC products.

Never owned a "rice burner".
 

Have a 2009 Toyota Corolla with 18,000km on it. It is our 3rd Toyota, the first 2 being Camrays.
This will definitely be my last car, hope to be able to drive for another 2 or 3 years.
 
I have never bought a brand new car. My current car is a 99 Chrysler Concorde. I bought it 7 years ago. I'm saving to buy another one.
 
I will have had my Honda Civic 14 years come this July. I will get a new car when it costs more to fix than the value. Now that I'm retired, I don't put so many miles on it, but if I get any more people on my home-delivered meals route, I may be traveling just as much (it's now a 23+ mile drive). Every time I go to but a car, I find the cost has roughly doubled. I never bought a used car - my dad used to say buying a used car is buying someone else's problem, because nobody ever gets rid of a good car.
 
About every 8 years normally, however my husband has become highly attached to his 2005 Dodge Dakota pick-up and he doesn't put a lot of miles on it so it's still under 100K. Plus he doesn't want a car payment. I just bought a Toyota Highlander two years ago and expect to keep it a long time. I was better off to finance it than take it out of my retirement, tax-wise, but I'll be glad to finish the car payments too.
 
I have bought several new motorcycles but never a new car. My very first car was a 1939 Rover 10 which my mum bought me for £20.00. I even passed my driving test in it. That was about 1966. I currently own a 2004 Peugeot 307 diesel estate. Still drives smooth as silk.

I would like to give up driving. But my daughter doesn't drive and it would be impractical not to have one.
 
debodun said:
I will have had my Honda Civic 14 years come this July. I will get a new car when it costs more to fix than the value. Now that I'm retired, I don't put so many miles on it, but if I get any more people on my home-delivered meals route, I may be traveling just as much (it's now a 23+ mile drive). Every time I go to but a car, I find the cost has roughly doubled. I never bought a used car - my dad used to say buying a used car is buying someone else's problem, because nobody ever gets rid of a good car.
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My car was a good used car. There was nothing wrong with it when I bought it used. Of course there are bad used cares but there are also good ones out there.
 
I don't buy brand new cars; they lose WAY too much value the minute you drive them off the showroom floor. My last car, a 2002 Saturn bought at the end of the model year, was considered a used car because somebody bought it for his wife who didn't like it, had only 82 miles on it and I bought it for several thousand dollars less than I could have bought the identical car sitting next to it which had never left the dealership.

I drove that car with no significant problems at all until April of this year, when the transmission went out and would have been too expensive to replace.

I found a 2014 Kia Forte in perfect condition, low mileage and one owner, and with a clean Car Fax report, always serviced by the dealer. I had it gone over by an independent mechanic and he pronounced it perfect. I like it a lot. I think I'm going to add a backup camera, though.

I don't really think the old saw about buying a used car is buying someone else's problems necessarily holds true anymore because so many people buy a new car every few years. There were a lot of very nice late model low mileage used cars out there when I was looking. It was true in my dad's time, but not so much anymore when some people think they always have to have the absolutely newest of everything.
 
I've had 2 new cars in my life, a 1986 Nissan pickup truck, and a 2015 Toyota Corolla, for commuting to my new job.

Oops, just realized that I had previously replied to this thread. :shrug:
 
My 18-year-old car died 3 1/2 years ago, just before I moved to where I live now. I couldn't afford to get it fixed and it was in such bad shape it didn't seem worth it to try when I needed to pay for this place.
I haven't been able to afford to replace it so for the first time in nearly 50 years I'm without transportation.
They say there are freebies out there for low-income seniors but I haven't found one!
 
Here, everything is so spread out and we have really lousy public transportation and cabs are VERY expensive, so if you're without a car it's really hard. I was without one for a little over a month right after my car died, waiting to see if it could be fixed, etc., trying to find a new one (hard without transportation). I wound up begging rides to go to the store, drop me off at the dealership, etc. I seriously tried to find ways to get to places on the bus, but it just wouldn't work. Fortunately I have very kind neighbors who let me tag along to the grocery store

My sister depends on me for transportation, so she couldn't get anywhere, either. Bummer!
 
Butterfly said:
Here, everything is so spread out and we have really lousy public transportation and cabs are VERY expensive, so if you're without a car it's really hard. I was without one for a little over a month right after my car died, waiting to see if it could be fixed, etc., trying to find a new one (hard without transportation). I wound up begging rides to go to the store, drop me off at the dealership, etc. I seriously tried to find ways to get to places on the bus, but it just wouldn't work. Fortunately I have very kind neighbors who let me tag along to the grocery store

My sister depends on me for transportation, so she couldn't get anywhere, either. Bummer!
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Welcome to my world for the past 3 1/2 years. :)
 
My Harley Davidson motorcycle is a 2009, has 13k miles on it and it will be my last bike. Hope to ride a couple more years though. Born to be wild....
 
CoMoJayne said:
About every 8 years normally, however my husband has become highly attached to his 2005 Dodge Dakota pick-up and he doesn't put a lot of miles on it so it's still under 100K. Plus he doesn't want a car payment. I just bought a Toyota Highlander two years ago and expect to keep it a long time. I was better off to finance it than take it out of my retirement, tax-wise, but I'll be glad to finish the car payments too.
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I hear ya on the Dodge Dakota. I have a 1997 Dakota SLT with about 90K on it, and it is a great truck...still runs and looks almost new. I like the mid-size trucks...big enough to do anything I need, yet still small enough to keep in the garage. I look at the new trucks occasionally, and the sticker price of $40k to $70k quickly makes me appreciate the old Dodge. We only drive about 7 or 8 thousand miles a year anymore...most of that in the Impala, so buying a new car is more of a Whim than a necessity. If I buy a new car, I may take a serious look at one of these small SUV's...a Ford Escape, or Subaru Forester, etc...easier for our old bodies to get in/out, and plenty of cargo space....easy to load/unload.
 
It varies, depending on the mileage we're running up. When we bought a home after being long-time renters (while still working), we found in our city we needed a second car. There were just too many times when DH and I were going in separate directions. Public transportation is available but slow to most places.

We usually keep a car to at least 100K or more. Today's cars are very well built and have much better safety equipment. I can attest that stability control, ABS braking, and airbags are A MUST for us, based on our experiences.

Now that we're retired, we run the car often but usually shorter trips (anything under 75 miles RT is considered "nothing" in California, LOL). But when we travel we prefer driving trips, so we rack up 400-1000 miles on a single trip.

Our SUV is a 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe, V6. GREAT car, thousands under the Hondas/Acuras we drove before, just as good if not better. Extremely happy with it. This is what we take on our travels.

Have a 2010 Ford Fusion sedan, V6. Good car, lots of HP but lousy auto trans gearing. Still, it moves when I stomp on the accelerator, which I do quite a bit [smile]. Not an Accord beater, though; ergonomics are poor, controls were designed by an engineering/design sadist. It comes sooo close, and there are features I love about it, but overall I liked my old '85 Taurus better.

The Hyundai has about 79K miles on it and the Fusion 39K. However, I would like to have a luxury SUV or crossover. I want a quieter, more comfortable ride for very long trips. I figure this will be the last new car we buy. Up 'til now we couldn't afford the cars I really wanted.

Now we're finally able to afford one. So it's a matter of figuring out what I want to buy (DH lets me make all the car decisions; he doesn't care about autos). I've narrowed it down to five models just based on specs and on-line reviews. In another month I'll start doing test drives to compare them.

One issue I have is the SUV which appears best is noticeably wider (but not longer) than what we have now. We will be going down to this one car, and many places we go have very tight parking slots. I need to decide how big an issue this is going to be. We live in a crowded urban area and it's a real consideration when driving anything bigger than a Prius -- and this is MUCH bigger than a Prius!

Our current two cars are paid for, and we'll be giving them to friends who could really use a good used car. We keep our cars in top mechanical condition, always.
 
Buying a used car is not necessarily buying a problem. That said, my dad never bought used cars either, not even for his kids. He did however, buy a new car every 5 years, so whoever bought the cars he traded in were getting good cars with low mileage, that had been well cared for and serviced regularly. They lived outside once we enclosed the carport, but not through months of hard winters or heavy traveling, and only the Impala was ever in a fender-bender. We only ever got two lemons, a '70-something Pontiac and my Escort.
 
Falcon said:
I get rid of them when the ash trays get full. So far they're pretty clean, so I'm still driving this '05 Envoy.

I usually stick to GMC products.

Never owned a "rice burner".
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The "rice burner" we had was a Nissan Xterra which was built in Tennessee. It was a good car, so they stopped making them.
 

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