How Poor People Buy Cars

tech_ken

> Car debt is terrible. But many people can’t get car debt, because many banks won’t write a $3,000 car loan, much less to someone with unsteady income. The bottom quintile often can’t even reach the $1,000 car - it’s hard to get out of the cycle where you can’t get a job because you don’t have a car. When people wave off Waymo or bus lanes or bike lanes because car culture is fine, they mean it works fine for them. Banger post. My first car was a $1200 Geo Prism that I bought through the mechanic shop at the gas station up the street. It was older than my (younger) brother; got a good 5 years out of it before the transmission literally fell apart on Rt 2.

Neywiny

I guess it can be like the Terry Pratchett boot theory a bit. But yeah even among your circle, you need to be careful. I know somebody who got a junk car for a bad price because it was from somebody in their circle and everyone else vouched for the seller.

__d

Dear HN crowd: this is not a market opportunity. Not for loans, not for cars. Just … leave it alone. K, thx, bye.

Synthetic7346

I'm curious about the insurance aspect of this, do people buying $1000 cars forego insurance?

carabiner

My first car was $1k bought in Michigan in 2006. It was a massive POS and took $1,500 in repairs to run reliably. I immediately bought a $7k car when I got a job.

JackFr

My wife was from Reno, I was from NY. The week before we got married (in 1996) we were out there and her sister lent us a 1979 F150 at about 2O0k miles —- 3-on-the-tree, no air, AM radio, lap belts. The passenger door would fly open on left turns unless it was locked. I nearly lost my brother when I picked him up at the airport and forgot to warn him. Maybe cause I was about to get married but I loved that truck.

djmips

Toyota Echo - perhaps the car car ever made.

SOLAR_FIELDS

In the course of my work I deal with organizations who sell cars out of impound lots. There is a whole capitalistic recycling industry of buying junked cars and reassembling them into functioning vehicles again. Interestingly, a fair portion of junked cars get shipped overseas where the labor is very, very low cost and high tech, cheap labor chop shops in places like India or in some countries in Africa will have highly skilled workers basically cut out crumple zones and restore completely totaled vehicles into new looking cars and turn around and sell them. This would never be viable here in the States because of the labor cost, but when you are paying someone $1 USD a day to do highly skilled and technical labor like this it becomes very viable. Another popular tactic where I live in Texas is to steal a car and drive it south of the border and strip it. Then buy a junked car same make and model with a clean VIN. Then ship that clean VIN second car south of the border as well and rebuild it with the stolen parts and ship it back over for resale.

coderenegade

My newest and most expensive car cost $5k in freedom dollars. It gets the job done. I have an older, more clapped out vehicle that cost $1500, and is in surprisingly decent knick for a 30 year old car, but it does need a paint job and some imminent TLC to keep it from deteriorating. That will cost more than it's worth, but I think it's worth doing in the long run.

SoftTalker

I'm not poor but I think it's ridiculous to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a car. I learned that after buying a new car when I got my first job. Since then about $5k is my limit.

thelastgallon

Buying a beat-up used car is risky. They are cheap for a reason, they have repairs that cost thousands. And cascading repairs, you don't know what else is wrong until the first problem is fixed, and the first problem itself is $3000 - $5000. The article has anecdotes that worked out for some people, but it doesn't work out for most people. It is like buying a lottery ticket. Buying a new cheap car is the safest, and I'm sure there are always some models available under 20K. Poor people (or even non-poor people) can buy the cheapest transportation available. US used to have the cheapest cars in the world. Its completely changed now, all you need to do is to ask your administrators to let the manufacturers from China bring them in. 1) They can buy a cheap car that will cost nothing in fuel. This is the worlds cheapest SOLAR CAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk6aTKV-des 2) They can buy EV KEI cars ( https://insideevs.com/news/807141/byd-racco-kei-driven-japan... ) 3) They can ask for biking trials to be built. Atlanta seems to have built many miles of connected trials. 4) EV Golf carts are a perfectly acceptable form of transportation: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-golf-cart-kingdom/ Ask your admin to allow cheap cars/KEI/golf and work with your local city to build walk/bike/golf-cart trials. Its a one time cost, you can make transportation cheap permanently.

nbf_1995

Before getting a job in software, I used to buy cars from insurance auctions. Plenty of cars that run and drive end up there for various reason and if you were patient, you could get running and driving cars for $1000 or less (This was 7+ years ago). The catch is that you don't know what you're getting. You either have to have be mechanically inclined or know somebody who is to walk the lot and check the cars out before you bid. Case and point, I bought a car that was fine when we inspected it, but when they picked it up with the forklift they knocked a hole in the oil pan, and we had to get it towed. $100 for a new oil pan (for the wrong year lol) and I got many years out of it.

thelastgallon

One solution that exists in third world is motorbikes. New motorbikes cost ~$1000. These are perfectly acceptable, ideal for the western economies, if there are enough of them on the road, it will get safer. One bike in between 10,000 cars is hard to see, but enough of them create bike-awareness. China's EV cars are known, but it also has 350 million electric motorbikes.

rekabis

I have never owned a vehicle newer than 20 years old, I have just never seen the point of doing so. The financial math just never worked out. With that said, I have always done my research and managed to obtain vehicles which, after maybe some high-importance fixes in the beginning, managed to last another 5-20 years without any other major work done to them. Hell, aside from oil changes and minor fixes that I did entirely by myself, I got my last car for nearly free and it lasted me a good decade before some idiot with a jacked-up pickup - he couldn’t even see me behind him - backed into me even though I was laying on the horn like crazy. Besides, anything prior to 2006 is going to be much easier to fix, does not have DRM, and will not spy on you unless it comes with OnStar. Honestly, the biggest pain point these days is the lack of a true manual clutch, with the full three pedals on the floor. These vehicles are becoming distressingly rare.

PeterHolzwarth

Wow! This didn't last long on the front page. Strange - I thought it was an honest and informative little article. I noticed it on the front page. An hour later, it's on page 3. <edit> Now I'm just curious to see how fast the downward trajectory is on this currently 70-post article is. Still in the 1-2 hour range and now it is on page 4 of HN.

WalterBright

My current car is 54 years old. I bought it in 1986.

JohnFen

Interesting. I'm far from poor, but that's pretty much exactly how I buy cars, and I have never regretted it. The couple of times that I bought more expensive cars, I've regretted it. The only time I'd take out a loan to buy a car is in an emergency situation. That's happened once, and is one of the purchases I regretted. The car I currently drive is a 2007 economy model I purchased for $2,000 with ~150,000 miles on it. I've had it for almost 10 years now, and it remains solid and reliable. I am meticulous about regular maintenance, though.