Buying School Clunkers Make More Sense than a Brand New Car - Essay Example

Buying School Clunkers Make More Sense than a Brand New Car Nut Graph: Janine Henderson, age 15 finally wore down her parents and convinced them that she simply needs to have a car for her upcoming 16th birthday. They have agreed to the purchase of a 2nd hand car with the agreement that she will help fix it up and keep it running. Expectations of a spanking brand new car for the special day were dashed but the explanation of her folks made her realize that fixing up a school clunker may be the best thing to ever happen to her. There was no way she was getting a brand new car with a budget of only $10,000 to cover the cost of the actual car and the repairs it would be needing. I spent the week with the Henderson's as they went clunker shopping and restoration cost canvassing over the weekend. “Times are hard and Janine has to realize that priorities have to be set. Not everything that she owns has to be brand new. It just has to still be functional, “her father Dean explains as we sit on the porch of their family home, sharing a cup of hot coffee while waiting for Janine to finally join us so we could hit the road. “Her friends have tried to make her feel bad about not getting a new car like they did, but Janine understands that fixing up a clunker is all our budget can afford. Her new car will have to wait till she can afford it. ” Romy Chua of Autoworks Buy and Sell agrees with Dean. “Most 16 year old kids don't need a brand new car. What they do need is the experience of maintaining an old clunker that can teach them lessons about maintenance responsibility for their future cars. Clunkers may look like they should be retired because they need some body work or does not have the latest bells and whistles but with proper maintenance, it gets the kid from point A to point B. That is all that should matter to them at their ages. ” That is sound advice coming from a man who makes his living selling cars. A new car will the owners back by at least $20,000 while a clunker can easily be had for around $2,000 and up, there truly does seem to be an economic advantage to owning a clunker. Provided the new owner of the car will not mind shelling out some extra dollars for whatever repairs the car might need. He still comes out ahead in the long run than if he had bought a new car. While most teenage kids of driving age look forward to waking up to a brand new car being delivered at their doorstep on the morning of their birthday, the economics of our times have changed that pattern. Since a brand new car loses approximately 20 percent of its value the minute it is driven off the car lot, buying you teenage kid a “teaching car” which is what some parents and mechanics prefer to call the clunkers, turns out to be a big bargain. Buying a car that is more than ten years old often is often seen as a waste of money because of the cost of repairs that are involved in whipping the car into shape. Wise buyers though know that is not the case. In fact, the old clunkers can help you save money in the long run even with the cost of repairs thrown in. People like Joel Berry (Why I Drive a 13-Year-Old Car, 2009) understand that economics plays an important role in car buying decisions. In his case, he has been driving the same second hand 1995 Geo Prizm for a number of years now and far as he is concerned, the car is far from being the old clunker that his friends think his car to be. Joel explains; “I bought my Geo Prizm in 1995 with 5,000 miles on it. It now has 140,000 miles on it and still runs fine. I paid off the car in 1999. It is now 2008.I haven’t had a car payment in nine years. How much has this saved? Our payments for this car were $250 a month. Over nine years, I’ve gone 108 months without making a payment. At $250 a month, that’s a savings of $27,000. Over the lifetime of the car, I’ve spent less than $2000 in repairs. Subtracting this from my savings still leaves me with $25,000 extra over buying a new car right after the Prizm was paid off. “ Joel admits that he has had to sacrifice some of his personal time in order to fix some parts of the car himself in order to save on cash but he still won't turn in his clunker. “I'll miss the hands on repair and banging on the dashboard to get the heater working too much. Every time I get into the car, I see the door frame where my dog Midge bit into it during a trip to the vet. I've got a lot of good and bad memories stored in that little space.” he laughed. For Joel, his clunker is more than just a car; it's an important part of his life and a keeper of his memories. It is that kind of economics that Dean Henderson hopes that his daughter Janine will learn with the purchase of her own clunker car. As I watched Janine and her dad walking around the garage while they chose the perfect fixer upper, I could also see that life lessons were being passed on from father to daughter at that very moment. There was Dean, advising his daughter prioritizing comfort over the looks of the car and looking over the motor specs with the salesman from Autoworks. The fixer upper that they finally decided on was a 1989 Mitsubishi Mirage. As we waited to close the deal with Mr. Chua, I asked Dean if he thought it was still a good idea to get Janine a clunker since it was obvious Janine was trying to bat for more than what their budget allotted for. “Janine knows what she wants. At this age, she tends to blur the lines between want and need. What I am trying to teach her right now is that she only needs to get what she needs, which is a reliable mode of transportation.” he explained as we shared a cup of coffee in the guest lounge of the dealership. Even though she did want more (as her father and I correctly suspected), Janine accepted that the time was not right for her to make a whimsical purchase. Money is tight for the family right now and her car is something that they consider a necessity which is why she was going to get what they could afford to make monthly payments on. Lucky for Janine, she was saved from having to pay monthly dues because the car they chose was well below their actual budget. With a budget of $10,000 overall, the plunked down only $2,000 on the 1989 Mitsubishi Mirage that had a few dents here and there, needed a paint job in some parts, had missing body trimmings, needed a new set of window gaskets and tires, plus some major electrical work. Dean got a good bargain on the price of the car which on the other hand, came with almost new looking mag wheels and a built in Blaupunkt sound system, the two aspects of the car that made his daughter fall in love with the clunker in the first place. With their repair budget now set at $8,000 to include any major and minor repairs to her ride, Janine has the money to spruce up the clunker and make it a pretty decent student service car. Driving the clunker off the lot, we definitely heard a few engine gasps and wheezes. It was nothing that worried Dean though. All clunkers have minor to major problems. The fun of owning a clunker he reveals is in repairing the known problems and then making the car your own. This explains why our next stop was at Adam’s Car Repair and Maintenance Garage, the pit stop for Dean’s own commuter car whenever repairs are needed. Adam Harvey, the owner and primary mechanic on the lot, could not help but admire the clunker that just rolled in. With its powerful motor 16 valve engine and huge radiator, the Lancer was meant for speed. It was just choking on it at the moment. At this point, Janine seemed to be entertaining the thoughts of becoming a grease monkey herself. With an assurance from her dad that the clunker restoration would become a Henderson family project, they further got the cost of major repairs down by another thousand, brining the total car repair costs down to only $3000. The car had less than 20,000 miles on its odometer, which told Adam that there would not be any major engine repairs needed since the car was only improperly maintained by the original owner, a bit of news that had father and son heaving a sigh of relief. Upon overhearing that the Henderson’s were about to undertake a restoration project on their own, Harvey offers them a discount card at his garage, although Janine had to pay a $200 yearly membership on the card, the membership offered her up to 50% discount on her spare parts and maintenance purchases and a free 24 hour towing service as well. The latter an important thing to have when driving a clunker like the Mitsubishi Lancer. When I left the Henderson's that day, Janine's old clunker was at Adam's garage and would be home in about 2 weeks. I promised to come back and take a ride with her in her clunker. Two weeks later and Janine is driving her repaired and spruced up Mirage clunker. She and her father decided that they would do the body paint themselves after Adam pulled the minor and major dents out for them. So right now, the car looks like a map of America with its putty in odd places and incomplete body trimmings, those would be added in by Adam later, after the paint job. Janine got the car that she needed without having to break the bank. There is no brand new car available in the size of the Mitsubishi Mirage clunker at the cost of $2,000. Even with all the repairs thrown in, Dean only spent $6,000 on his daughter’s car; making the clunker one of the best buys of her young life. Janine tells me that fixing up her clunker was an experience that she will never forget because of the lessons that she learned from it. “It turns out that I could get my dream car without forcing my dad to break the bank.” she excitedly tells me as we take the Lancer out for a spin. “This clunker is the perfect car for me. The restoration work we are doing allows me to relfect my personality in the final look of the car. Not to mention that the restoration will eventually leave me with some savings in the bank for any future car repair or maintenance needs.” Janine got her car without her parents having to get a car loan for her and in the process, the car insurance costs also went down as Janine needed only liability insurance instead of comprehensive. Since she bought a well known car model from a reliable manufacturer, her repair costs are also minimal and the repairs and replacements that she did at the onset insure that she will have at least 3 years of worry free driving for the clunker. (Why You Should Drive a Clunker, 2010). Hmmm... maybe all student should drive clunkers to school instead. That way the parents can save more money for their college fund and other necessities instead. Works Cited Berry Joel. “Why I Drive a 13-Year-Old Car”. 21 Jan. 2009. Web. 3 Dec. 2011. Cars.com Staff. “Advantages of New and Used Cars”. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. Chua, Romy. Personal interview. 25 November 2011. Henderson, Dean. Personal interview. 27 November 2011. Henderson, Janine. Personal interview. 30 November 2011. Hough, Andy. “Why You Should Drive a Clunker”. 16 Aug. 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. Montoya, Ronald. “When to Repair Your Car and When to Buy a New One”. 2 Apr. 2009. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. Read More