I was gonna suggest to go hunting in South of France or Spain and drive it home, but prices look as bad or worse. Might be just as well off to get one shipped from Japan, at least the steering wheel will be on the correct side for you.

I've spent most of November finding out how screwed up the car market is. Nissan's CVT went into crap the bed and die mode, confirmed by dealer, for nearly $7000 they'll put a rebuild in it which will only get a 1 year warranty... ummm don't sound too promising.

Months waiting periods on most new small cars, and dealers don't even have any demos to check them out, order blind, pay 33% more than 18 months ago, yeuch. Interest rates on them are not great either.

So used cars less than 3 years old are selling over new MRSP, forget that. Over three years old... supply dried up and overpriced also. Looks like there's cars for sale, but when you weed the crap out, there's nothing much left. SUVs and trucks kinda plentiful though.

Anyhoo, been grinding my arse off just trying to find a reliable daily driver, turning up to "no accident" cars, which is what the paperwork says, the overspray on the trim and mismatched plastics says different though, seller acts dumb, okay buddy, whatever, bye. Some shadier dealers seem to be placing cars with relatives, who say it's their car, but they gotta sell, been driving it, super reliable, like you'd know when the paperwork has only been in your name 5 days. Gah. Unfriggingbelieveable the dumbass, obvious and ancient tricks some of these sellers trying to pull. Yah, I've come across one incidence of bondo over newspaper too. In a rocker panel of a unibody no less.

Clean one owner low mileage fuel efficient cars may as well be unicorns at this point. I have seen three slightly damaged cars "as they came in" to a couple of dealers, and based on the lightness of the damage and seeing those dealers operations, I've asked them to put me first in line for them, but holy crap do things take time... getting the repair and safety certificates done, they all say their mechanics are slammed and working flat out. Anyway, shortlist is looking like...
2013 C-Max, 170,000 km
2013 Rio EX sedan 100,000 km
2016 Chevy Cruze LT1 50,000 km
But I'm waiting on callbacks on those. Elsewhere there's another 2013 Rio, a 2012, and a 2012 Forte which doesn't have the nu engine which I've yet to see. I'm avoiding Jatco CVTs like the plague. C-max has a cvt, but that drivetrain has done 500,000 miles in taxi service on one vehicle, and over 300,000 on multiple so I think it should be fine.

Anything electric and hybrid new has more like a 6 month wait and prices have blown through $50,000 months ago and are more like $60,000 now, real crazy.

So sifting the crap for something to get 2 or 3 years out of.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-12-02, 04:00:

I've spent most of November finding out how screwed up the car market is. Nissan's CVT went into crap the bed and die mode, confirmed by dealer, for nearly $7000 they'll put a rebuild in it which will only get a 1 year warranty... ummm don't sound too promising.

I’ve done manual transmission swaps on several cars and suburbans.

No idea if Nissan is dumb enough to make the auto/ manual transaxles dimensionally the same but I do know that a Nissan CVT isn’t worth repairing

There are beaters that remain reliable even when ancient, manual transmission Cobalts and Mirages come to mind as being simple, reliable and easy to repair.

I have the wife can't drive a manual problem 🙁 Though it could be a swap candidate after we get something she can drive, and then a car to teach her in. I thought of getting a rental for a few weeks, and buying a manual... but guess what, all rentals smaller than mid/large SUV are unobtainium here too. Too many other cars got recalls as well as supply issues. It's not so much the short term gas in those as the daily rate at $60 or something stupid.

sekao wrote on 2022-08-13, 08:24:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-08-12, 19:49:

Another Popular car of the 80’s was the Chevy Camero IROC.

Commercial link:
https://youtu.be/pB-AgikWZhs

Beautiful car. Took me way too long to realize that the line in teenage dirtbag was "he drives an IROC" rather than "in Iraq"...

I always thought that line was weird... but now it makes sense.

Chrysler or Toyota?

Both are good makers.

For us, (my family) drove three generations of Toyotas, first one was 1990 Tercel. Then next two was Corolla 2003 and 2021, both bought new. The 2003 was maintained twice a year and annual Krown applied and around 17 years, we gave it to one of our relative. Very little rust and runs like top.

Cheers,

Been hunting toyotas, not saying a good one won't turn up, but I haven't been quick enough so far, two sold while I was grinding along the back roads at 40mph to go see them. Everything around me is GTA commuter belt, most that turn up are very high mileage... and you know, I respect that it got that far, but I want one with something left. I am not keen on going all that far to see one, even if it sounds good, some outliers I've got there and the paint is three tone, factory, slightly too dark and slightly too light, yeahno, it was supposed to be unmesssed with for the price. I ain't buying several accidents patched together.... and it's like Van Halen's brown M&M trick, if you spot something slighly hinky, shit has not been taken care of right, there's the iceberg 9/10 below the surface you're not seeing at first glance. "Whether all the safety toys work" might seem fussy when there's a lot of cars without them, but if the blind spot or parking sensors are out, the panel they were installed in has seen trauma of some variety, yeah, those side curtain airbags have got sensors in the same places, they gonna work? I wouldn't put money on it.

Now then dings and stuff do happen all the time and they get fixed right, but holy cow, there's a lot of insurance payouts on the paper work, and you think, "oh, it got $4000 spent in body work a few years back." But did it really? no look it changed owners after... the owner took the money and the work was likely not done, it's gone to a place that buys cars up cheap, fixes them for peanuts and resells, it had $500 of work to fix a $4000 problem.. and you can maybe see it. In some cases, low cost wrecker swap parts from clean car might be okay, but if it's all panelled in behind plastic shields back of it, it's hard to tell if it penetrated structure. Without teardown of course.... I ain't spending 2 hours taking cars apart to figure out if they were fixed right and I doubt many would let me.

This is like 90% of whats for sale at the moment and it's getting old.

Go farther out, like 3 hours away or more and borrow a friend's car instead or rent a car to check out used car for sale, if like, buy it and travel back again with a friend and friend drive the other car while you drive the car that you found. Yes, I know what Toronto is and I also live east of you. Or from a used car dealer.

Might need to save more. Or buy a beater car real cheap and drive, save up much more then find another much better than that.

The last of kind that was good deal was $700 Caravan 1987, 2.2L carb, in good condition in 2003 but engine is not but I had knowledge to repair and was located north of my city about 30 minutes drive. Got it working very well in 2004, Drove it from 2006, till 2011 when my previous work closed. Ever since, I have not seen anything like this, best ones were ones that you buy from big lot used car stores.

This is why, you need to save more.

Cheers,

At the rate I can fix cars now due to health issues, I need about 5 beaters to have one for the wife to drive, near 100 clicks a day though, so need reliability, she's moving up at work too so wants something "respectable" also so no harlequin body panels etc. Did the beater thing for years, done with it. Though went to new 5+ years back because of the last divot in the market from 08-09 making the same problems of used cars selling near MRSP of new ones. Thought with on time servicing etc, it would last 20 years. This block in the pipeline is gonna take a while to work through though, 3+ years of messed up used car market if the new ones start flowing now.... and they ain't looking like doing so for at least 6 months. So yah, since I don't want to be in this hole again in a handful of months, I'm trying to find something that's near certain to ride it all the way out.

Finally! Got a 2017 Kia Rio EX hatch. Other dealers seemed to be stringing me along, maybe next week, yada yada, though it turned out everything was ready at once a day or two before Christmas, but I'd put a deposit on this 2017 at a Kia main dealer just the day before, and was waiting through blizzard and stat holidays for them to have the thing ready. Still has to go in next week because their touch up guy went off to the Carribean or something.

Ah man if I knew it was this bad back in November I would have gone private "as is" sale and thrown it in a reputable shop for a couple of weeks for a few thousand worth of work on it. Thing was, discovering exactly how monumentally screwed the market is was like digging a rock out in your back yard, at first you think it's basket ball sized, just have to dig around it more, keep levering, nothing happening... dig more, it looks maybe tote sized, hmmm... try levering and rocking, nope it's in there, expose a large appliance worth, oooh boy this is a doozy... then you're up to minivan sized... awww hell nah... different tactics.... start cutting trenches to determine extent.... and find it's probably the top corner of a huge boulder the size of a football field that your entire property is basically sitting on. Because only as you claw back the dirt is the full picture exposed. Look at listings, lots of cars for sale, good choice, nope, half are already gone, half are not the quality of cars these dealers would have on their lot 2 years ago, they're lipsticked pigs.

I'm not saying I've got an amazing deal in this one really, it's something around $7000 worth I paid a bit over $10k for, but I'd seen that blizzard in forecast and knew ppl would be writing off cars left and right. Picking it up, sales guy was telling me how slammed they got between xmas and NY with ppl needing cars, and how they were getting shorted on their rentals to only a couple of days now, because rental cars are scarce too.

Anyway, drive careful, tape some 15th century ming vases to the front or something to a) remind you not to hit anything and b) be cheaper and easier to replace.

Still gonna look into getting something done to the Nissan, it limpeth still, gotta get my head round how close the sedan/hatch platforms/drivetrains are to see if it will take a 4 speed auto.

KIA is pretty good car. My brother's wife had one, and totalled it in a accident.

Cheers,

Amount of plug-in cars in use equals LPG ones right now.

I was ambivalent about full electrics, thinking I'd snag one if one came along at a good enough price, but actually seeing what happened over the holidays put me off. There were 4 hour lineups for using the chargers... So yah, I know holiday traffic can be a bugger anyway when people want to go similar places at the same time, but with getting the "fuel" being an hour two process per available "pump", it illustrated that EVs aren't really ready for mass adoption yet. I was looking at a Volt though, and some Cmax Energis came on the radar.

Early mpg numbers for the 17 Rio we got are pleasing though, whereas the Versa advertised near 38 but actually got more like a disappointing 34, this Rio was advertised near 34 and seems to be getting near 38, in winter, on snow tires. It's weird though, back before 2008 when everyone said EPA estimates were hugely optimistic, I found it fairly easy to beat them, then when they "made them tougher and more realistic" cars rated under that, I have had trouble hitting them.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-17, 06:13:

I was ambivalent about full electrics, thinking I'd snag one if one came along at a good enough price, but actually seeing what happened over the holidays put me off.

Now imagine what's the situation like in less advanced countries! Yes we're going full electric and we'll arrive inevitably, we're just not there yet no matter how much marketing shoves the idea down our throats.

60% of plug-in cars were sold in China last year

Swapped my slow old non-turbo petrol Forester for a not-quite-so-old diesel XC70 last year. Loved the Subaru but Volvo is way more comfortable and the engine so much more powerful. But tbh the switch of brand was due to local service availability, multiple Volvo speciallists in town but the nearest Subaru guys are 25-50 miles away.

Yah, that keeps me out of Subarus too, nearest dealer too far away.

IDK if they brought the diesel to Canada in the XC70, can't remember seeing one.

EU in 2035:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueE36JP8Pp4
no insurance, no driving license, no tax, basically India 😀

I also like to get my hands dirty with vintage stuff, so here is my other hobby realetes to obsolete things: 1990 Mustang GT aka Foxbody. This only rolls around summer time, my daily driver is 2017 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-03-17, 07:51:

I also like to get my hands dirty with vintage stuff, so here is my other hobby realetes to obsolete things: 1990 Mustang GT aka Foxbody. This only rolls around summer time, my daily driver is 2017 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid.

9A222169-F8C0-4FA1-B68D-C860F0FA0EE3.jpeg

looks in great shape, very clean. bet its fun when you do take it out