What car should I buy?

Sometimes mechanics do more than just service your car. With our Tasmanian warmth and community spirit we tend to help solve family challenges as well as tend to engines and exhausts.  Here’s a recent true story that provides a good example of how we go above and beyond our auto repair responsibilities.

A well-known neighbourhood matriarch stood before me. Always helpful, I quickly indicated that I was at her service when upon she began to bemoan the troublesome behaviour of her teenage daughter.

It seemed that her daughter  had been offered a job as a dental assistant on the other side of town which she was reluctant to accept. Being winter, she would be coming home in the dark via two buses with a half kilometre walk at each end. This did not appeal to either party. Naturally, her mother  wanted her daughter to take this attractive career move but was also concerned for her daughter’s safety. As an enticement to take the job, Mum wanted to buy her a small, safe, reliable and cheap car. “So”, she demanded of me, “which car do you advise?”

Little did she know that the daughter had paid me a visit a few days prior. She had explained about the job offer and awkwardness of the consequent bus situation. She thought she would quite like a car and be the first among her friends to be independent. However, her finances were non-existent. Her strategy, then, was to nudge her mother into buying her a car. Her tactic was to appear reluctant to take the job because of the buses and because she already had a neat job close-by with two of her best friends. She allowed Mum to nag and harangue her to the point where, in utter frustration she would relent and announced she would find a way to buy her daughter a – “small, safe, reliable and cheap car” – , only if she would agree to accept the better job.

With the clever offspring now in the ‘driver’s seat’ her next ploy was to remove the word ‘cheap’ from the criteria and replace it with ‘sporty’. “So, what do YOU advise?” she demanded.

Uh, oh, suddenly from a humble mechanic I became omniscient Solomon with not only a mechanical but an intergenerational challenge!

The solution was not so tricky. In my opinion, small cars post 2008 are usually well short of 100,000 km. They are also all fitted with air bags and ABS brakes. They may also still be within factory warranty or young enough not to be worn. The law of the land requires vehicles to be fuel-efficient and competition forces all cars to be nippy. So, we’ve ticked the ‘reliable, safe and sporty’ boxes and gone part way to ‘cheap’. The balance of ‘cheap’ relates to purchase price. Generally, the smaller the car, the cheaper the price and at that age will be about 35 – 40% of the new price.

In summary, my advice to mother and daughter was the same (separately, of course – I might be related to Solomon but I’m still not brave enough to handle these two at the same time!) was to look for a common car of Asian origin and no more than six years old. Then the trick is to sell it before the dial reaches 180,000 km. This should provide six to eight years of fairly trouble-free motoring. No guarantees, mind you, but good odds.

One more BUT! Make sure to get it inspected by your favourite repairer before paying any money. The youngest and cleanest car can be hiding a big regret, particularly if the seller is named Tom, Dick, Solly, Harry or Honest John!

Happy motoring and remember to consult www.jackmans.com.au for all you motoring questions.

 

by