My husband has a car but needs a new car. Over nine years of being together we have never fought over anything like we have over this issue. The biggest source of contention is his desire to buy a very inexpensive vehicle that will inevitably have very high miles and is older than 10 years. My concern is that an inexpensive car will lead to expensive repairs and extensive hassles.
It also doesn't help that my husband's first car as a teenager was a $300 1985 Toyota Camry. Unfortunately for me, this car was not a lemon and lasted for more than a few years. This past week my husband found a 1995 Toyota Tercel on craigslist that he is going to purchase today. I'm not sure if lightning will strike twice and this will be a reliable vehicle, but with Toyotas you can usually run them to the ground. The funny part of the story with this Tercel, is that it is being purchased from a private seller from one of the toniest suburbs in Minnesota: Edina. The seller is a Tercel fanatic and is upgrading to a 1997 Tercel with an automatic transmission because of his arthritis.
With a small car, the most important thing to my husband and I was that it had a hatchback in order to maximize cargo room (not a feature in said Tercel). A manual transmission was also a must for my husband. My Toyota Echo has a manual transmission, but I would have preferred for one of our cars to be an automatic (tear). My husband is a rarity because he is obsessed with minimal cars, or cars that are for people who are not obsessed with cars (if that makes sense). About a month ago my husband test drove a Ford Festiva. This is one of the most stripped-down cars you can buy, but it freaked me out because it was terribly small and has no airbags. My husband decided against this option, but almost bought it a few days even after deciding it was unsafe. End of story, the Tercel has airbags, we paid for it in cash ($1,950), and I hope car makers start to get a clue that people want small cars again.
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