After lying to myself and you guys saying I didn’t need another car, we ended up getting on. Funny how that works out. We bought it on Black Friday, but it wasn’t a Black Friday deal, just a good find.
SUV
We considered a few vehicles without a strong preference. We already have a sedan and this being Texas meant we wanted something larger. So we thought an SUV would be the right choice. There was the Volvo XC90, a Range Rover, a Lexus GX 470, Toyota Highlander, and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.
The Volvo XC90 was really nice, but the current model is from 2016 and goes for $30,000+. Volvos are not the cheapest to maintain as we have seen recently.
A Range Rover. So were we really going to buy a Range Rover? Probably not. However, when you look online you can get a 2012 for under $25,000 which is pretty crazy because it sold for $70,000 six years ago, that is an insane amount of depreciation! However researching the car showed that maintaining one is crazy expensive. In fact so expensive that it would be cheaper to buy a 5-year extended warranty for $9,000.
The Highlander is a big Toyota at a reasonable price. The Sequoia, 4Runner, and Land Cruiser are too expensive. They retain their value really well so getting a used one isn’t a spectacular deal. A new one is $30,000+ and it will cost $15,000+ to get one under 100,000 miles.
My interest in the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was for the tax rebates. Around $8,000 in federal and state rebates. The lowest price was $35,000 and I could get it down to Round $32,000. So after rebates it would be $24,000 which is pretty good for being able to go all electric. After sitting in it, it was pretty small and slow.
We were out and saw a Lexus GX 470 in the parking lot that looked good so I looked into it. Turns out it is pretty luxurious and they are known to last for a ton of miles, like 300,000. I found a 2006 one on eBay that had a new engine and 180,000 miles on the car for a pretty good deal so I decided to get that. The craziest part is I didn’t test drive any of these cars.
Process
There are many great websites to search for used cars. I like Cars.com, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace. If you are first starting out I would recommend going to a Carmax to check everything out and get a feel for what you’d want. I also browsed eBay to get a sense of prices that things were selling for. Using eBay is more difficult because you may not be close enough to see and test drive the car which are pretty important for a large purchase.
However, being a hypocrite I bought the car on eBay. One HUGE bonus is eBay’s Vehicle Purchase Protection which protects you against fraud. I won the auction and then arranged with the seller to wire the money. Wiring money without a guarantee is super risky and likely fraud. In fact, when I first tried my bank stopped it and when I called them they wanted me to know that if this was a scammer the money would be gone. And that is why it is important that I followed eBay’s rules.
Once the seller got the money they shipped the car. They mailed the title and keys ahead of time. A few days after that it met the driver and got the car. Then I went to the Tax Office to pay for the title, sales tax, and registration.
What’s next
Everyone was so skeptical when I told the story and rightly so. As if to confirm their doubts the car broke down today with a broken battery, so that is getting replaced. Hopefully that is the end of it, but you never know.
There are some upgrades that I’m interested in. Some people go all out and make it into an overland vehicle. I would consider adding a tent or a roof rack for skis, but it is too early to say. I also would like to add an aux cable to the car since that was one of the items I had on my wishlist.
Is there another vehicle in our future? Never say never, because I’m always looking for a deal and when I heard that Chevy is discounting the Volt I thought maybe a steal could be had on that with the $7500 federal and $2500 state tax rebate. You’ll be the first to know.
Conclusion
We will probably make this our daily driver and see if it is as great as the listing made it appear. I don’t think I would go as far as recommending buying a car and getting it shipped as there is plenty of local inventory around. However, this listing was too good to pass up and it wasn’t a fortune, so I took my chances.