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I'm saving up my cash, trying to scrape together enough money to buy a car. I'll be living out of it and driving to and from california from washington 2 times a year, so reliability is a big deal. I was looking at a toyota previa, at what millage do these things crap out? ideally I'll get one with under 200K on it. any other good cars that I can sleep in? (I'm 6'6") a forester? price and reliability come first, but sleepability is a nice bonus.

An older Mercedes diesel stationwagon in decent condition will practically run forever.

How much are you looking to spend? One of the aforementioned will cost you $3-4k, but will run for a long time.

I got $600 in the bank now, but I don't need the car until I graduate, so spring 2011. a previa can be had for around 2000.

Cars don't run to a certain mileage and crap out - it's a slow increase in the frequency and severity of breakage, dependant largely on maintenance.

In general, condition (how it was maitained) is much more important than model or make.

Do you have any interest in working on the car yourself? Some basic skills and tools can keep anything running. If not, mechanic bills will outpace the cost of a cheap car very quickly.

Learning to do stuff yourself would be quite valuable. My girlfriend kept her first car running for a LONG time beyond what most people would have done by doing a lot of the work herself. Eventually even that got too expensive, since there were things she couldn't fix. It was an old Honda Prelude, and it had almost 300K on it when she finally let it rest. She was fixing something new almost every month, but usually they were small things (hoses, etc). The main thing is that you get lucky and don't have to put a new transmission or something into it.

lowlands wrote:An older Mercedes diesel stationwagon in decent condition will practically run forever.

I agree with lowlands. I had an old Mercedes diesel when I lived in Germany and it ran forever. Very solid quality. They are slow though but you get good gas mileage and they are easy to work on as well.

An AMC Pacer with have tons of room for your gear....$600 ought to do it.

One of these looks good -

Previa? I wouldn't get one. They old sounds like they are about to blow. Look up recall and reliability issues. Your milage would low to (16-20mgp), then you might as well get a Tacoma/toyota truck

thats simple... a JEEP

You don't necessarily need a station wagon or SUV type vehicle. On most sedans you can remove the back seat and create a sleeping area that goes into the trunk. Just check out the trunk space and make sure that there isn't a full sheet metal/ bracket structure that would prevent full access. My 2 cents on Jeeps is that they suck. Expensive to maintain.

Most cars that are well maintained will run a long time. That said, parts do break regardless of what it is. Japanese cars tend to take quite a bit of abuse though.

If you can work on it yourself, parts will be the cheapest on domestic vehicles but the only American vehicle I would ever consider buying is a truck. Their cars suck.

I like my toyota a bunch, but the accelerator pedal sometimes sticks and I run into things. Anyone else having this problem?

Older Volvo wagon (245, 855, etc.)

You can pick one up with 100K on the odo and that's only about a quarter of its useful life! Easy to work on with a decent enthusiast community on the Intertoobs to show you the way.

They (the cars -- not the owners) are also slow and ugly, making them a relatively unattractive target for car thieves. I would, however, plan on locking your doors if you park it for an extended period of time in any of the following cities:

-Berkeley, CA
-Madison, WI
-Ithaca, NY


Much more comfy to sleep in than a Civic, too. I miss mine...

The benefit of the internet these days is of course information. Any decent car has its on-line following, clubs and websites. And what's nice about that is you can usually find out exactly what the problem is or what the problems will be in the future. I have a 1998 BMW 740il (150k) which has a big presence on-line. I order all my parts on line and do all the simple fixes myself. This has saved me a lot of money. Anytime it seems like something maybe running afoul a quick google will diagnose the problem in short order. Get on the web and start researching, get yourself down to a few models and makes then you will know what you are getting into when you actually start looking. Oh, and work on your mechanic skills becuase in the 2k range they will be very useful.