How to buy a good car for $1000

Okay, I can ignore things like the car doesn't look nice or doors don't lock. But what should I actually look for? What are the things I shouldn't compromise about? Is there some useful metric to calculate useful life of the car? Rules of thumb for issues that may arise, like bad brakes, tires, engine noise, etc? What are things I can fix myself?

True, being able to know for sure you can get to work (or wherever important) is a huge peace of mind. And more than peace of mind, can be critical to remaining employed, etc.

A new car does not guarantee you that. I've had partners who are way more into new cars than me and those new cars have failed to be usable in various ways.

A brand new EV was in the shop for 3 weeks. Oops, can't go to work.

A near-new car had an ECU lock up so no way to start it. Call a tow truck to the dealer ($$$) and took a week ($$$$).

A near new EV had an EV-specific problem: it refused to charge. Car ran fine, but couldn't charge so only so many miles left. Drive to dealer, took a few days. At least warranty covered it.

> In many cases it might be better for someone to go deeper into debt on the car if it means they will be able to focus and perform better at work.

Going into debt for a car (a fast depreciating asset) is always a terrible idea. If you're super rich and can afford it, fine, have fun. But for anyone counting money, it's the second worst financial decision you can ever make (second only to carrying credit card debt).

Back to having reliable transportation, which is super important for most people.

Solution? Buy two used cars for way less than half of a new car which can still fail.

I only buy cheap used cars, but always have more than one available. Occasionally one needs maintenance and is out of commission for a few days. That's fine, I have another one (actually a few more, but even one more would do). All my cars put together cost no more than an average new car today. And insurance is way cheaper since they're all old beaters.

It's like servers. You can spend gazillion on the highest end server but it can still fail resulting in downtime. Or you buy a few cheap servers for redundancy and accept that failure is ok and redundancy is in place.

Usually buying a new car that already went to a facelift is your best bet as it means it has been significantly long enough in the market to get most of its early gremlins known and sorted.

Having said that I would now only consider buying a new car if I can pay it in one installment. I once loaned a new car and I regretted it immediately. Car was good but the amount I paid each month would have been better spent/invested elsewhere. I now drive a 20y old car that I paid cash last year. I checked before buying what were the main failure point (CVT transmission if not maintained properly) and bought a car with all the invoices and documentation checking it had been maintained properly and had her CVT oil changed. I expected a few things to fix (audio speaker, shocks) and negociated taking those into account.

The car drive very well, is spatious and comfortable, I could afford replacing it if it died suddently. I would only consider a new car if I decided to go electric but gas price would need to multiply by 3 at the very least. I've seen people going EV then back to gas when they realized that after ~8 years of use their EV needed a battery replacement whose cost negated any saving on gas. I think battery price needs to go down for more EV adoption. Nobody wants to buy a second hand EV if it needs a usd10-15k for a new battery and an EV becomes pretty much unsellable at this point without a replaced battery.

Please link to some prices for motorcycles that can go 75 miles per hour (necessary on the highway) that cost < $1k. 5 seconds of googling says they start at around $5k. I have a moto so I agree with the premise broadly that more should consider them. They are not as useful in all weather and of course there is risk of injury which most poor people will have no ability to pay for in our US health care situation...

I spent some time in Vietnam back in 2005, after getting a few lifts on the the back of mopeds in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to look up some road traffic accident stats for those cities: I never took another lift like that again.

My last car was a Subaru forester that did cost a little less, was older tho, on that I spent about $800 in total per year on to keep it alive, easily doing 20k kilometres a year.

Motorcycles arent so much cheaper necessarily.

New cars are nice - shiny and reliable but you pay a bit. It can also be risky from the financial point of view if you buy on credit.

A tip for buying cheap ones is buy off someone wealthy who doesn't care about the money from the old car and would otherwise get like $0 from a dealer.

Since you are sure, can you name a few?

You can't because none exist. There are no new cars in the USA for less than 20K.

The alternatives offered here are nonsensical. Where in the US does one buy this youtube solar car or KEI cars? Nowhere, that is where. They are not sold in the USA.

Golf carts are legal on hardly any roads so that is another non-starter unless you live in a neigborhood where they are allowed and never plan to go anywhere outside of it.

Cycling is great, that is the only practical suggestion on the list. But of course a bike is not a car so if someone actually needs a car, a bike is not a car.

For anyone poor who needs cheap transportation, old beater cars are the best.

Don't have to be poor either, for anyone who doesn't want to throw good money away at depreciation, old cars are the best deal. As an engineer in Silicon Valley I could technically afford many kinds of expensive cars but I've yet to ever spend more than 20K on any car or truck. Buy used, keep forever, that's the best.

There is no such thing as a new cheap car.

I am comfortably middle class now. I still buy budget cars because I can’t get past how outrageously expensive most cars are now. But even now I still think, every time I sit in my new (well, three year old) car: wow, this is awesome. I don’t know if my friends think those same thoughts, because I would be honestly a little embarrassed to explain why I feel that way.

I sold it off for a different $1000 car before it happened, but sounds like that's precisely what happened to you!

The last cheaper used car I bought, I kept for about 10 years, it was $10k. I sold it to my brother in-law after that, who had it another 5 years… it would have gone longer, but he didn’t realized I had changed the timing belt before I sold it to him, so he misjudged how long the one he put on would last, and it destroyed the engine… anyway, let’s go with it..

The last new car I got, was relatively inexpensive, as far as new cars go, at $35k. If a $10k used car ran for 15 years, I’d have to keep that $35k car for over 50 years to make it worth it.

New cars are almost never financially justifiable. And that new car will run into the same maintenance issues and costs as the used one as it ages.

The nicer the car, the worse this equation gets, as increased car pricing translates to luxury, not quality. This makes them very different from work boots.

Unfortunately there's a fair bit if industry built around charging people who are stretched financially more, but it's possible to avoid that.

Also: "Don't be snarky."

(FWIW I don't think you meant to do either of these things, but the worst internet patterns propagate unintentionally.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I doubt the "HN crowd" was about to do anything, but it'd be better if someone saw some sort of market opportunity here. It sounds pretty miserable not being able to get to a well paid job. I personally appreciate all the people who lent me money and sold me cars. It enabled a lot of income for me, over a lifetime.