I pointed out in anther comment that what your car is worth only matters if your intent is to sell it. If your intent is to get reliable transportation as cheaply as possible, you need to focus on cost of repairing current car vs. cost of buying another car and keeping it on the road.

The thumbnail shows the red tape, but it also covers putty, a different type of tape that blends better and the metal clamp-type repair. So depending on where the leak is, it might work.

i.e., you may be stuck with a car that doesn’t work and a huge loan you can’t pay

Or, take a few months and try to save $1300. Sell the Hyundai for $200. Buy a $1500 Civic or Corolla. A 2009 Civic with 130K miles is going to be in better shape usually than a 2006 Hyundai with 200K miles. Drive that sucker for 2 years while saving as much as you can and paying off your debt as much as you can and…

Add up all the repairs the car needs to run and be safe. If that is more than the cash price of a reliable beater, it’s not worth fixing. Otherwise think about how much use you’ll get out of the car, not what you’ll unload it for.

Exactly. And when the OP says it “needs brakes” what do they mean by that? Is this the dealer telling them that, or are the brakes actually making noise?

Yup, brakes and exhaust would be cheaper than one year of interest at those places.

And don’t take I-5 to do iit,, the PCH is one of the reasons the automobile should exist. 

“You can totally drive from Seattle to San Diego.” 

That’s what gets me. You can take a couple of days to leisurely drive down the coast to Cali from Seattle. It’s only ‘not driving distance’ if you’re wanting to daily commute.

“sell it for whatever you can get and use the money to get a bus pass.”

I crossed the country three times in my twenties. Each in a different shitbox.

You can totally drive from Seattle to San Diego. Also consider living close to the internship and riding a bike. Spend that extra money on rent.

Step 2: Film the journey.

“You are probably better off just fixing the brakes and the exhaust on your Hyundai, banking some money, and building your credit.”

I bought an 02 Rav-4 off the showroom floor right out of college and drove it until some idiot NJ driver (redundant) crashed into me and totaled it when it had 275k miles on it.

Apart from appalling interest rates (I live in Massachusetts so that would be 20 percent max)

Look, LW1, I get that you’re in a bad spot. But the solution is not continuing the patterns that got you there. At some point, you’ve got to bite the bullet and deal with the short-term pain that’s necessary to get your finances in order. In all likelihood, if you go with the BHPH option, you’re going to find yourself…

Used dealers like that will finance anyone. To the first user, it sounds like a bad idea for you. If you can’t afford brakes and an exhaust (where are you shopping? Midas? It shouldn’t be more than $500 for pads and rotors on a Hyundai. An exhaust shop can weld in some new pipe and a cheapie muffler for $100-200) then…

Pulling the VIN history on a car from a Buy Here Pay Here can be equal parts hilarious and sad. Not at all uncommon for a couple of those cars to have been coming back and forth from the lot for 5+ years. No new owners, because nobody makes it more than a handful of payments before it either breaks down or gets…