Buying a car - cheap

May 27, 11:20 AMNewark Suburban Community ExaminerRobin Holleran

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 Our prize ebay purchase

ebay is more than a place to unload Beanie Babies and other accumulated chachkes; it’s an awesome place to find a car – CHEAP.

My oldest had the misfortune of turning 17 (legal driving age in NJ) right when my business fell off a cliff. Being a single mom, I needed him to help chauffer his brother and sister to their seemingly endless parade of activities. But I only had one car.

And he was NOT going to use the car that I need for work, food shopping and everything else. Let’s face, no matter how good any young driver is, they’re still new behind the wheel and are going to make mistakes. If he has an accident in my car - even a fender bender – I won’t be able to get to work. Besides, there are plenty of times when two kids need to be in two different places in two entirely different directions. Until I’m able to clone myself, we needed another car.

Initially, we looked at cars for sale in town and at used cars at dealerships. How depressing! It might be cheaper to buy a second hand car from individual, but there are no guarantees that the engine isn’t be held together by rubber bands. And what do I know – lifting the hood or looking underneath the chassis would tell me nothing.

Dealerships are not much better. Not only do you have to deal with cheesy salespeople but the prices still seemed high to someone who’s watching her pennies. Sure, some cars come with dealer warranties, but it seemed that everything we looked at was $10,000-$15,000. That might not sound like much to many people in our town, but to a self-employed freelance writer with 3 teenagers, it was a lot.

Then I remembered my brother telling me about a friend of his that bought an Audi on ebay and that the online auction house guaranteed the condition of the car by covering repairs for undisclosed problems over the first $1,000. When a mechanic found $4,000 worth of work that needed to be done on the Audi that weren’t disclosed on the listing, ebay paid for everything over that first $1,000.

Within a couple of days, I was the proud owner of a nine year-old Jeep Laredo for only $4,500! Despite its age, the Jeep only had 75,000 miles (the same as my three year old Ford Freestyle) and was in incredible condition – with more bells and whistles than any car I’ve ever owned. The previous owner, a single teacher, had used it primarily to go back and worth to work and had recently spent $4,000 on repairs - and gave me the receipt as proof in the event an issue arose.

I immediately brought the Jeep to a local mechanic who was amazed at the price I got the car. There were a couple of maintenance items he recommended, but nothing major – and the Blue Book value for this car with this mileage was between $8,000 and $12,000!

Now that’s a bargain!

If you decide to buy a car on ebay (which is where I’m going to look first from now on), it’s VERY important to read the listing very carefully. If there is a problem or exception listed, then ebay’s guarantee won’t work – it’s only to cover the “surprises” that aren’t mentioned in the listing.

ebay also offers, for a nominal fee, to send a mechanic out to inspect the car before buying one, but I didn’t go that route so I can’t really comment on how that works. And I noticed that the best deals are on the cars are the ones that are less gas efficient (Hondas and Toyotas still fetch higher prices) although this trend held true at the dealerships as well.