Posted on Fri Aug 8, 02:34 PM in Adventures in Automobiling
I’m not giving up… yet.
I have a 14-year-old Nissan Sentra. I bought it right out of college in 1998, so I’ve had it 10 years of its long life. I always felt I’ve taken good care of it, always brought it in for oil changes, didn’t drive it badly, didn’t drive it for long on weird noises or bad performance.
It has cost me a lot over the years. I kept all my repair/oil change receipts, and including the 4 years I was making payments on it, the monthly average for all 10 years of my ownership of this car comes out to about $180/month. That’s what it has cost me to run this car.
I am probably crazy and not demonstrating good fiscal sense by constantly repairing the car, but there is something to be said for dependability. I’ve never once wondered if it would start or worry if it would get me as far as I needed it to. I can count on 4 fingers the number of times it didn’t start (once was not being able to get the key in the ignition cylinder because it was frozen shut). It has taken me on countless road trips in hot and cold weather. It’s a trooper.
Having just bought the van, we are no position to get another car. I am looking for jobs, and one of my goals upon getting employment is to save up for downpayment on a new car. And by new I mean NEW, no used shit anymore, something I know the history on. I think I want a Honda or Toyota. Nissan is cheaper, but hey, I’ve seen where that gets me.
But I already know that there is a CV boot repair in my future (the garage pointed that out to me a month or so back). And today, I discovered it is leaking gas. I suspect this is recent, as I just filled up the tank a day ago and the leaking began shortly thereafter. My garage tells me that in a worst-case scenario, replacing a tank (if the leak is the tank itself and not a coupling somewhere else) could run me over $500. The boot repair will be around $250.
I’m so tired of this. I have repairs from this winter on my credit card that I haven’t even paid off yet. Do I really want to spend this money to ensure we have two vehicles? Even though I did the math myself, I’m having a hard time realizing this would be an extra $180 per month (plus the $45 insurance payment). For so many months now we griped about not having two cars. Now that we have them, I’m thinking about getting rid of the only car that kept us going. Would we be in a better place, just having the Sienna (which the garage tells us, is clean as a whistle)?
And really, would any dealership buy it? Even though everything under the hood runs great, would I get anything that would make it worth my effort?
I gave up my 93 Chevy pickup a couple months ago, and Karen and I are flying solo (sort of) in the 06 Scion xb (I also have a little old Honda motorbike). The truck, though, had just reached a point where insuring and maintaining it weren’t cost effective anymore. The big brake blowout at the end helped us make the decision to get rid of it, but it still wasn’t easy.
If a dealership won’t buy your Sentra (and they probably won’t), there’s always cars4causes.net.
FWIW, 3-5 are supposed to be a car’s best years; in its first two years, it depreciates rapidly, and after 5 years the maintenance costs begin to go up.