I've had a lot of terrible luck with cars. One time, I called it bad car-ma. It feels that unrelenting.
It all started out when I foolishly decided to get rid of my trusty old Camry after law school. The car had been good to me, and I had over 300,000 miles on it with minimal problems. It was old, and I figured I deserved a newer car.
I sold the Camry to my neighbor and bought a 2000 VW Jetta. That thing was a money pit. It was a lot of fun to drive when it worked, but it rarely worked, and it was very expensive to maintain. The car lasted a year and a half before I gave up and sold it to a junkyard. I replaced it with a 2005 Honda Civic, since they're known to be reliable. That one lasted six months before the engine and transmission died. I was working in San Francisco at the time, so I didn't replace the car. I just took the bus. My neighbor was still driving the Camry I sold her.
Then I moved to Phoenix.
I was planning on continuing to take the bus, but I hadn't realized how huge the Phoenix metro area is and how insufficient the bus system is, so I ended up getting a 2000 Toyota Echo. That was a great car. I drove it for two years before it got totaled. I replaced it with a 2002 Toyota Prius because I drive a lot for work, and I had noticed a pattern in my used cars. The Toyotas were reliable and the other ones were junk.
Well, it turns out the Prius broke the pattern. I bought it from the stereotypical used car dealer. The car was in abysmal shape and every time I took it to the mechanic, something new was wrong with it. Finally, last week it breathed its last.
I was going to buy another beat up clunker car like the last several and just cross my fingers that this one lasts. But then I did the math. All of these clunker cars described above have been in the last 4.5 years. I logged into my budget software and saw how much I had been paying on car repairs, and I realized it would be cheaper to buy a new car than to keep paying to fix old ones. I was spending a car payment's worth of money each month on repairs.
After doing some research, I decided I still didn't want to buy a brand-new car because of the depreciation hit, so I figured I would go with a newer used car. I also knew I wanted to go with another Toyota because I've had really good luck. I set about finding a way to not get cheated on a used car. I read a lot of reviews of different ways of buying a car and decided to buy from Carvana.
Carvana is an online marketplace for used cars. It's really easy - just pick the car you want, pay for it, and arrange delivery. I was a bit hesitant to buy a car sight-unseen, but they have a 7-day money back guarantee, so I went with it.
I had to take out a loan because I had used the money I got at the end of December on paying off my largest credit card, so I was broke. I traded in my old junked up car for a small amount (mostly to get rid of it for the convenience factor), and that was easy, too. I just had to input the info and scan my title. I got excellent terms on the loan - way better than I was expecting. Carvana partners with Go Finance, which is technically a subprime lender, but subprime lenders like to get some good borrowers on their portfolios in order to reduce risk, and they offer great rates to the good borrowers - sometimes better than a regular lender will. I don't care who else my lender lends to; I only care about my interest rate, and I'm more than satisfied. (They say they give 7% to average borrowers. I got 4.8%. I've never heard of a used car loan being that cheap.)
Once everything was all set, I was given the documents to digitally sign, which I did. I scheduled a delivery window for between 7 and 8 PM on Saturday night, and the car arrived right to my apartment promptly at 7. I took it for a test drive, signed the paperwork, and exchanged my old car for my new-to-me one. I took my car to my mechanic for a look-over this morning, and it got a clean bill of health.
This is how buying a car should be. No fuss, no muss, no getting cheated by being sold a lemon. Just a hassle-free buying experience.
I'm now the owner of a 2014 Toyota Prius C. It has 31,000 miles on it, which is 120,000 miles less than the lowest mileage car I had previously bought. I did the math on it, and even though I had to take out a loan, and I spent considerably more on it than on any previous car, it's going to pay for itself in reliability and repair savings if it lasts even two years. I plan to drive it for at least 10.
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