Like many other factors, the car is putting more and more strain on families’ budgets. Credit problems and refusals to finance are becoming increasingly common, others rightly refuse to finance the purchase of a vehicle at rates that today would almost be considered usury. Historically, it is also not uncommon for traditional rates to be close to 10%, while not so long ago this specialized in second chance loans.
That’s why many buyers looking for a new car are now turning to vehicles that you would call “Minumen”. Old cars, which often cannot be financed and which will essentially remain in service until the financial crisis subsides. In other words, cars sold for a few thousand dollars at most, accompanied by a 30ft/30 second warranty, at your own risk.
Browsing classifieds sites today, I see more and more car dealers keeping these cars. A return to old methods for the latter, who have largely abandoned these old cars, to focus on vehicles that are seven or eight years old at most, in order to access credit and more easily avoid customer return (because the car broke the same day).
Need a car fast? Don’t have access to financing or can’t add a monthly payment to your budget? You can find old cars today that could do the job despite some rust and advanced mileage. Cars that are far from exciting, sell for $2,000 to $4,000, maybe a little more, and don’t pose much of a financial risk. Because they depreciate very little in value unless you overspend on repairs, and because junkyards now pay close to $1,000 for complete, still-running cars.
Until recently, this type of car was mainly sold by private individuals, but we are currently experiencing a strong comeback among dealers. A situation that reminds me of a shop in St-Hubert where (as a teenager) I bought a few “kids”. Because when I was 17, I bought what I could with no means. Certainly not what I wanted.
In 1994-1995 this company must have owned about forty old cars that sold for between $500 and $2,500. No financing possible, the same applies to the inspection. However, the business owner, a certain Mr. Fortin, managed to sell these old Jew’s Harps with an astonishing turnover rate. A celebration of Chevrolet Celebrity, Dodge Aries K, Ford Tempo, Renault Alliance and other great classic cars of this kind, with sometimes a few Japanese cars, even if they were rare.
Some of my friends and I who were in a similar financial situation went from time to time to look at the inventory of this store. To pass the time, but also to see if it wouldn’t be possible to find something better than what we were riding back then. Every time we approached a car to observe it, Mr. Fortin would in turn approach and tell us: “C’char là, yé douète” (translation: it’s in good condition). He said it so many times it became his nickname. So since there was no internet and therefore we had to travel to see the vehicles, we went to “Yé douète” a couple of times a month.
Fortin first sold me a 1985 Mazda 626 with a slightly weak engine that had nearly 200,000 miles on the odometer. A car that cost $800 that I replaced the engine a few weeks later. It must be said that we got a $100 engine for junk back then. Two, three evenings in a friend’s father’s garage getting their hands dirty and the Mazda was entitled to its mechanical transplant. A few months later I sold this car to Mr Fortin to purchase a 1988 Volkswagen Fox.
He offered me $800 for the Mazda with the “new” engine while the Fox sold for $1,200. Although solid, this Volkswagen only lasted a month before the manual transmission failed. I then took said fox back to Mr. Fortin, who still agreed to give me back $700 to sell me a 1988 Sunbird for $800. She’ll only have made this one for a week. In the end, the quiet crackle of its 2-litre OHC engine was more of a nuisance than I was led to believe.
Mr Fortin, a good player, took over the Sunbird with no questions asked, fitted a different engine and sold it to a guy I would ironically meet at a restaurant a few weeks later. Gone are the days when cars aged much faster but repaired themselves with a handful of dollars and a little ingenuity. Those were the days when there were no car diagnostic sockets, temperature, charge and engine oil warning lights were the only things to worry about, and parts were next to nothing.
It’s much more difficult to get such cars these days, as the amount of technological elements (even in a twelve-year-old car) means that the problems multiply and cost a lot more to fix. Because even if you are told that the coveted car is “dubious”, it is clear that with these amounts you buy yourself small problems.