...wha?

It’s important to remember that just because you have a $5k for a car doesn’t mean you need to spend all that money at once...you can find a pretty nice, reliable, cheap-to-maintain DD for $3k, and keep the other $2k for any major repairs to pop-up later.

I think something that nobody’s mentioned yet is the difference in price between a dealer and private seller. A dealer’s going to make the car nice and shiny, but no repair any faults, and charge you twice as much. A similar car from a private seller might not look as pretty, but it’s going to be in better shape…

Meh, I owned a ‘94 Suburban for about 6 years. Paid $1k for it...needed new paint, but everything else was in really good shape. Never did anything to it except replace the oil and brake pads, and it ran like a champ.

American trucks or Japanese cars. They might not be face-melting, awe-inspiring, Apple iGadget-compatible works-of-art, but for getting around day-to-day, it’s pretty easy.

I’ve never owned a car that cost more than $5k; the nicest was a ‘96 Camry...then a ‘92 Altima, then a ‘94 BMW, then a ‘94 Suburban, and finally I’m driving a ‘00 Camry currently.

Agreed.  Same thing with older Caddy’s and other “fancy” cars from 30 years ago.  Somebody bought it wanting to ball-on-a-budget, realized they couldn’t take care of it, and probably spent $400 on a subwoofer instead of replacing suspension or braking components.

I’d like to second Ticallaion’s question: out of curiosity, how do you charge clients to find vehicles? Is it a commission, flat-fee, etc.? Just curious.

Yeah, and a Corolla? You can find a really nice Corolla for under $2k; I’d buy something in the $1,500 - 2,500 range and, if you can’t get it inspected, keep the money handy to invest in major repairs. They’re pretty much bullet-proof, so if you have $5k to sink into it, go ahead and have a Corolla that’s going to run…

I mean, it’s a pretty big car; wonder if you could cram a ZZ454 or 572 in the engine compartment?

Not gonna lie, I’d frequent a place like that.

Right; I may have been off about the percentage, but you’re basically just agreeing with me.  I was saying that it’s up to the adjuster to decide the value of the car and whether or not the damage exceeds the limit needed to total it, not Lotus or the owner of the car.

I drink and smoke, but I don’t go to bars.  I drive, and I have a license, but I’ve never been pulled over.  I did celebrate on my 21st (as well as several prior birthdays), but I stopped getting carded for the most part when I was 14 or 15, since I looked pretty old for my age.

I do have a driver’s license that I keep in my glovebox in case I get pulled over, but I’ve never been pulled over...I haven’t flown since I was 13 and you didn’t need an ID to board a plane. I smoke and I drink, but I’ve basically shopped at the same three stores since I was 18; besides which, at my age I’m looking a…

That’d just be poor decision-making on your part, since you’d only be saving your insurance company money. Now if you want to talk fraud, you’d let the adjuster write you a check to fix all the damage, but then tell the shop not to fix the frame, in which case you might slip them a cut.

Impossible to tell without going to look at it, but I think if I was in the market for a DD and saw this, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it a quick once-over.

Yeah, my XV20's belt broke...engine shut off, and I rolled it into a parking lot.  I happened to be next to a tow truck driver’s place that I knew fairly well, so after getting it towed to my shop for free, I replaced the belt with a $30 Gates product (somebody had put a cheap-o Chinese joint on there) without any…

The biggest problem is for the poor and the elderly who don’t have the money or means of transportation to get to the DMV and pay $20 for an ID they don’t really need otherwise, and these laws are specifically targeted at excluding these groups from participating.

It’s not that much; remember that this thing’s 25 years old.  You’ll find similar model-year Accords and Camry’s with of 500k still toolin’ around town.

Depends; if it’s spent it’s entire life in the Southwest, I’d be willing to guess that the rust isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be. You could probably fix that for a hundred dollars and have a really nice car for $2k.