During the fifties I bought an AmericaMotors station wagon new. In the sixties my wife was working and needed a dependable car. I bought five Volkswagens during the sixties, a new one every other year. In '79 I bought a new Buick. In the eighties and nineties I drove used cars? In 2000, my daughter bought a new Volkswagen Beatle, a yellow one. In 2004 she needed a larger car for her work. I helped her get the car she wanted a she gave me her VW which I drove until a few weeks ago when I sold it. I'm now driving a 2006 ford with a hundred and fifty-seven thousand miles on it. My son gave it to me. It belonged to my grandson but got a new Fiat 500 when he started college. My son also bought a new ford, so the car I got was in the way, taking up space. It will be my last car
I'm definitely on my last car too @Bill Boggs....just wish it didn't have a note to go along with it. Hope you and your wife are feeling well now.
Unless I win the lottery or something, there will be no more new cars for me and, even if I were rich, I think I'd restore an old one rather than buy a new one. I'll probably stick with ones that I can afford to pay for outright, as it's getting harder to fit car payments into my budget.
@Ken Anderson we'd probably all been better off if we'd followed that policy even back when we were younger.
My wife is better. I am too but I run a fever every day. I se m to have an infection somewhere. My nurse is coming out in the morning to draw blood. They wanted me to come into the VA for blood work and X-rays but I told then, no. I didn't feel like it. They are overnighting me some steroids, thing my condition might be such that I need them to keep going. I don't know. I just want to feel better and feel like getting out of bed and doing something. Thanks for the thought.
@Hal Pollner Mazda vehicles run forever, according to the folks who rate such things. They are built by FORD MOTOR CO., Mazda Division. Frank
I thought the American dream was about unlimited opportunities but I'm just learning that those may include a brand new car as well. The thing is that I had virtually not been able to earn any real money until I was 35 when the wall came down. I never wanted a Diesel and I never wanted to buy a car on credit and so I did. So, the first brand new car (had a used Mazda 323 saloon before) which I was able to buy without taking out a loan was a red Mazda 323 station wagon in 1993. It turned out to be too small and too slow. So I bought a new Toyota Carina station wagon three years later, got bumped into four times from behind and from the side, but kept it for ten years before I bought a new Toyota Corolla Verso (3rd Generation) in 2006. It had to be a station wagon again but, ageing as I was, I also needed to sit higher. In 2012 I bought its successor Verso as probably my last new car which I still have. It has 43,000 miles on the clock now. Three years ago I crashed head-on into someone who'd disregarded the right of way but I had the car repaired and am now willing to use it until the next crash or for another 4-5 years if everything runs smoothly. Just bought new summer and winter tyres to manifest that. At my age and considering the trend towards E-mobility it doesn't make an awful lot of sense to me to buy another brand new car. Yet I'm always prepared to buy a used car in good condition if that's necessary, e.g. after another crash.