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Car Advice (long)
M's '06 Mazda 3 hatch is just about 6 years old (bought in 7/06). So far we've had no major repairs with it, just standard maintenance: oil changes, transmission flushes, new tires, and break maintenance.
Two weeks ago when we were accelerating onto the highway, the car jerked a little about 1/2 up the on ramp kind of like if you made a hard shift in a manual. The "check engine" light and "AT" light both came on and he realized the car was stuck in 3rd gear (the car is an automatic but has the capabilities to go into manual so it displays the gear on the dash). He tried to put the car into manual to get it to change gears but that didn't work. We pulled over, turned the car off and on and the "AT" light went away. We drove the rest of the way home without an issue and by the next day the "check engine" light also went off.
He had gotten the transmission fluid changed a few days before and figured that gunk particles and come loose and caused the problem. He googled the "AT" light to confirm what exactly it meant and found a lot of reports about some '04-'06 Mazda 3's having transmission issues. There's no guarantee that his will have further issues and nothing else has gone wrong the last two weeks.
If we were to have transmission issues that would obviously be a huge cost and we'd likely sell the car rather than fix it. But he's thinking it may be better to not risk it and sell it soon while the value is still decent and as far as we know there's nothing wrong with it. On the other hand with the baby coming in 2 months we hadn't anticipated getting another car. Maybe it would be okay to wait a couple years (though other repairs could come up during that time).
We are unsure about what to do. My parents always held onto cars for as long as they'd possibly last. My mom bought a caravan in the mid '80s and didn't get another one vehicle until 2000, then I drove the caravan in HS for another couple years. M's mom is more the opposite; she'd rather upgrade and not have to worry about major repairs.
Any thoughts, advice, words of wisdom? TIA!
Re: Car Advice (long)
I'd definitely get it checked out before you make any decisions. My old car did something similar and it was the fuel injectors. I had 2 replaced (out of 4) and it was about $500 and fixed the problem. That car was about 10 years old at the time and I hadn't kept up with the maintenance as I should have. Our bottom line with that car was that until we had enough to buy my next car outright, we would spend in repairs up to what the car was worth if we sold it (at that point, it was only about $1,200 - I got $900 for it 3 years later). I had some other issues in the next few years, but we never spent more than what we would have paid in car payments, so we came out ahead.
I would say that once you get a diagnosis, you need to look at how much it is going to cost to repair it versus what a car payment would be (I'm assuming you don't have the money saved to buy cash). Especially if the car is yours free and clear of any loans, I would think spending a bit more in repairs would be worth it to not have a car payment.
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Sounds like (if I'm reading it right) that you own the car outright. In that case, I would definitely hold onto it especially if it meant a new to you car meant having a car payment again. As cars age, there will be things that come up that need to be fixed, but as long as the repairs are cheaper than a year (or more) worth of car payments you're better off (IMO).
Like Pat's car is getting up there (an '02 with almost 200,000 miles). We'll drive that thing til it dies and I don't mind dropping some money into it because we haven't had a car payment on it for years.
I figure car payments on the low end are at least $200/month (that's where we try to stick, although mine is $250). So that's $2,400 out of pocket each year and even with a newer car there is no guarantee you won't have some out of pocket costs. I figure if the repairs are under that we're still winning out.
That being said, I anticipate replacing Pat's car in the somewhat near future. My opinions on cars have greatly shifted and I no longer care about having a nice car. When we bought the truck outright for $4k it felt great. I am going to push for our next car to be around $4-5k so we can just buy it and own it and be done with the financing crap.
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I'd get it checked out. We had a similar issue with the subaru and i was convinced it needed a transmission and it turned out to be the O2 sensor (which is a $500 fix).
I wouldn't buy a new car over a couple of thousands in repairs. We spent about $4k in repairs to the subaru last year, but we plan to keep it another 3-5 yrs so it's much cheaper than buying a new car (of course, my coupe needs to be replaced for logistical reasons...)
Coming from an automotive industry family, we always have new cars around. My parents got new cars every 2-3 years. DH and I will keep cars a little longer (we've had the PT Cruiser since 2008 and plan to replace it next year, and we had my Jeep from 2004-2011).
Transmission work can be very costly. On DH's PT Cruiser, we had the entire transmission replaced when the car was 2 years old (luckily it was still under warrantee). When my Jeep started having problems last year, the repairs would have been almost as much as we could get for it on a trade in, so we decided to sell it and buy the 200. I was able to sell the Jeep for a very decent down payment on the new car and also buy the extended warrantee. We were hoping to get pregnant at the time and needed to have a reliable vehicle in case that happened. (little did I know that less than a week after buying the 200, I would actually get pregnant!)
So I guess my advice would be to have the car looked at and get an estimate of what the repair costs would be. If the repair costs are close to what you could get on a trade in or outright sale, then I would look into getting a new car. You'll want to have a safe vehicle for the baby, whether you repair your existing car, or buy a new one.
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I agree with this idea. It all depends on what is wrong with the car and how much it takes to fix it. About 1 1/2 years ago my car needed $2,500 in repairs and I ended up trading it in (they gave me $2,500 which was generous... I should have only received like $500), and the ticket price on my used Chevy Equinox was $16,000. In my situation I think I made the right decision.... There was no guarantee that the $2,500 repair would last that long and I would have hated to put the money into it and then other things go wrong as well, especially when it had so many miles on it and was not in good shape.
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Thank you for all the advice!
As of right now the car seems to run fine. I'm encouraging DH to have the dealership look at it, or at least call them and inquire about the "AT" light. I'm not sure what they'll be able to tell us; if the car is running fine now they still wouldn't be able to predict if something else may happen in the future.
If his car ended up being one of the ones that needed major transmission repair we are looking at $3-4k to fix it. The car is still worth more than double that at the moment, so if something did happen it would probably make more financial sense to fix it. However, I don't know if we'd want to invest in a car that could have continual transmission issues.
We're wondering that if a major transmission problem were to present itself we wouldn't be able to get the same value for it in trade-in/sale if we wanted to get rid of it at that point. Which is what made us start considering selling it prior to anything going wrong since we can consciously report that there's nothing wrong with it.