Cars have cheap price tags for a lot of reasons. They might have mechanical issues, body damage, or other wear and tear. In this case, there’s nothing really wrong with either car – but they have covered a lot of miles. High mileage isn’t as scary as it used to be, but it will still drag down a car’s value.
Yesterday, we took a look at an older and a newer model of the same car, and it’s clear that to the majority of you, the old ways are the best ways. The big red ’76 Impala absolutely creamed the 2005 model. The general consensus seems to have been that the newer Impala would make fine basic transportation, but it isn’t really a desirable car. Big Red might very well have more rust than the seller is letting on, as many of you suspected, but it would have to be pretty bad to make it a bad deal.
I’m lucky enough to no longer be in the market for $1,500 beaters just to get to work and back, so I have no use for the ’05 Impala. I don’t have any use for a big-ass ’70s land barge either, but given the choice between the two, it’s the one I would choose as well.
It used to be that when a car hit 100,000 miles, it was done for. It didn’t matter where it came from or who built it. If you were absolutely meticulous about maintaining it, you could get a car to go further, but before long you’d be rebuilding and replacing things left and right. Over the last 30 years or so, reliability and durability has improved across the board to the point where almost any car can hit 200,000 miles with not much more than routine maintenance and a few replacement parts. These two are nothing special, just ordinary everyday economy cars that have rolled a quarter of a million miles and still run just fine. Let’s check them out.
2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser – $1,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.4-liter dual overhead cam inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Northridge, CA
Odometer reading: 245,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Yep – it’s the car so many of you love to hate, the Plymouth Neon Station Wagon-I mean, Chrysler PT Cruiser. It’s the car that went from popular show car to wait-listed production model to butt of many jokes in less than a decade. But as the years have gone by, the PT Cruiser has had the last laugh: it has turned out to be a pretty good, practical, reliable, cheap used car.
The standard PT Cruiser engine is Chrysler’s 2.4 liter twin-cam four, the same one found under the hoods of so many Dodge Stratus sedans. It was available with either a five-speed manual or a four-speed Ultradrive automatic transmission; this one has the automatic. Yeah, I know. At least Chrysler had worked the bugs out of the Ultradrive by this point. It has 245,000 miles on it, and the seller says it runs and drives just fine.
This is a post-facelift PT, when Chrysler toned down the retro aspects of the interior and tried to bring it into the 2000s. The result is that it looks a lot like a Dodge Caliber inside, and that’s not a good thing. Gray plastic abounds. Oh well; at least it has held up well, and it looks nice and clean. The seller says the air conditioner works fine, too.
The outside is clean too, and the paint is nice and shiny. Too bad it’s refrigerator-white. PT Cruisers came in some nice colors, too; purple was popular, and there was a really nice slate blue as well. I guess the original buyer of this one was just boring. Could be worse, I suppose – fake woodgrain was available too.
2010 Ford Focus SE – $1,900
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0-liter dual overhead cam inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Fullerton, CA
Odometer reading: 253,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Ford has been pushing the idea of a “world car” for years, but of course, we all know it’s largely bullshit. For a couple of years, though, when the Focus was introduced, our version was almost the same as Europe’s, to the point where you’d have to put the two cars side-by-side to tell them apart. In 2004, however, Europe got an all-new Focus, and we got a facelift and a new engine. In 2008, the American version got new sheetmetal and a bunch of structural improvements, and sadly lost its hatchback and wagon variants. All that was left was a two-door coupe, and this four-door sedan.
Under the hood is the celebrated Ford Duratec/Mazda MZR four-cylinder, displacing two liters and making 140 horsepower. It drives the front wheels through a four-speed automatic, also a Mazda joint venture. It’s a reliable and durable combination, and this one has more than a quarter million miles under its belt to prove it. The seller says it runs and drives well, but doesn’t go into details.
The original Focus interior was a cool design, as bold and modern as the outside was. Over the years, it got less daring and more like Ford’s other US offerings, which is to say, dull. Just like with the PT Cruiser, it’s as if the designers started listening to focus groups (no pun intended) instead of their gut instinct when it came time for a facelift, and the result is this design-by-committee snoozefest. It shows some signs of wear and tear, but considering the mileage, it looks pretty good.
Outside, it’s a good color, and it’s nice and shiny, but I’ll never understand how this stubby sedan shape with a mail-slot trunk opening is more desirable than the original hatchback version. Some of the panel gaps, especially where the bumpers join up, are a little off; odds are the bumpers have done their job a time or two over the years.
Of all the ways to save money on a car, seeking out something with lots of miles seems like the safest bet. High miles on a good-running car are a good sign that it’s been maintained, and as long as an inspection doesn’t reveal anything about to give out, you shouldn’t let a big number on the odometer scare you. I realize these two are nobody’s idea of dream cars, but for the price, they could be good cheap runabouts for someone. Which one are you going for?
There is no way pic 15 is from that Focus.
lol good catch!
Lol – found that listing, it’s a Buick Rendezvous with half the miles but only a couple hundred more. The Buick did not have a trunk shot from the Focus, however.
Nice color on the Focus, and the MZR will run until the heat death of the universe with basic maintenance. Gimme!
my MZR is almost 200k and I do not give it much maintenance beyond oil changes and alternators, so I can confirm it’s difficult to kill.
I had a 2012 Focus. Driving it made me sad. Even now, thinking of driving it makes me sad.
I still voted for it over the PT Cruiser.
I had a 2010 Focus, and while my new Civic Hybrid is far superior, I miss my little Butterface. YouTube taught be everything about that car, and saved me thousands. I’d wanted to trade pre-pandemic, but I held on, persevered, and saved up more money. I’d have kept it if I had room, transforming into a faux-autocross rally winter beater kind of thing. Trivia: 1) they were the #1 replacement new car bought under the C4C program. 2) Ford vastly under-estimated demand and had to add extra shifts 3) it is rumored Ford actually made money on them, a rarity among US-made small cars. Finally, a lot of old people bought them, they have a slightly elevated driving position, and they’re comfortable and feel like a bigger car. Learn how to replace sway bar end links, valve cover gaskets, and engine mounts and you are golden. All can be done easily with Harbor Freight tools. I wouldn’t mind having a 5-spd coupe to mess with in my retirement, or if I’m ever living in a house with a garage and a yard. It’s not a great car but it’s a good car, that you can work on yourself. I went through some rough personal times while I had that car, and keeping it going and making it just a little bit nicer helped keep me going too.
Focus for me. And really, b/c I actually already own a 2010.
Mine doesn’t have quite the miles, but she’s my more or less daily and I’ve come to love her as much as my other vehicles.
To address the interior, yeah, it’s not luxurious or even nice, but it does grow on you. Specifically, you have to (tongue in cheek) appreciate Ford’s attempt to mine the boy racer/rally car thing that was big at the time.
So comically large black on white sportscar style gauges? Check. Fake aluminum center console? Check. Radio display relocated to a silly racecar-ish auxiliary gauge pod on top of the dash? Check and mate.
It’s all wonderfully cheesey if you don’t take it seriously.
Loaded ’10 SES with leather & all the works. I adored that little turd.
Mine’s an SE (with a 5 spd), and aside from having a fondness for eating motor mounts, she’s a dream.
I changed 2 motor mounts on mine in less than an hour right before I sold it*. Motorcraft-only on the hydraulic one, but the others it’s ok to cheap out on. (*with hand tools, a torque wrench, the spare tire jack and a piece of 2×4, in a condo garage in violation of rules. do it fast and you won’t get caught…). With new mounts it felt like a Lexus. I feel like I’m part of some secret society.
I feel we may be in the same society – I do most of my work in my apartment’s garage, knowing that if I do it at night or on weekends, its unlikely that anyone from the staff will notice me. I also have a stealth tool box in the form of one of those rolling storage boxes so I don’t look particularly suspicious.
The Focus is probably the better choice, but I was always so annoyed they took away the hatch version, I can’t vote for it. The PT Cruiser looks like it was well cared for and will probably continue to be a reliable daily for another year or two.
Even though I grenaded the 4 speed slushbox (too much spirited driving) and it refused to get anything better than ~26ish mpg average, I’ll take the Focus. The trunk is actually roomier than it looks from the outside and it having independent suspension on all 4 corners makes it handle very well.
This generation Focus is today a good pick for a teenager’s first car. They’re cheap as hell, and have proven to be pretty reliable over time. They’re easy to fix and parts are cheap. This one has a conventional automatic which is….fine…..a much better bet than the PowerShit DCT that replaced it for the next generation (I believe in 2011), which are consistently on any sort of “used cars to avoid” list for good reason. I had a company issue Focus, a 2015 with that DCT. And yep, the transmission sucked ass. Kind of too bad, since aside from the transmission, it was a perfectly cromulent car. Surprisingly comfortable to road trip, decent power, easily 40mpg on the highway, steering/brakes/handling were a tick or two better than you’d expect from an economy car.
That powershift really was a shame. My wife’s 2015 Focus hatch was pretty nice and decent to drive otherwise. When we had the transmission partially rebuilt under warranty at 30k, they admitted there was no real fix for the problem. I figured we were on borrowed time after that so I got rid of it in short order.
It wasn’t a shame. It was a choice.
I think it was finally fixed in 2016 with something like the 7th revision to
the clutch shaft seal.
There’s no real way to make the DPS6 a good transmission. I think they eventually gave up trying to make a cheaper reverse-engineered DSG and switched to wet clutches, just like VW.
I had mine from ~2017 (the car only had like 10k miles when I got issued it) until 2024, at it was at 135k. Around the 50k mile mark I got a recall notice to bring it to ford, supposedly for a firmware update that would take 30 minutes. Apparently the car bricked during the update, and then it was at the dealer for like 2 months since a new TCM was backordered (this was apparently a common problem). When I got the receipt, they evidently not only replaced the TCM, but a whole ton of other stuff including the clutch packs. Aaaand was it fixed? Nope. It was exactly the same crappy, shuddering mess in traffic as it had been for the prior 50k miles. The dealer admitted “it’s how the transmission is” and recommended that “assertive” acceleration off the line yields better results, which I’d long noticed and adopted. Not like smashing your foot down at every green light, but just tipping into the gas a bit harder tended to result in it setting off more smoothly than trying to barely toe it. There was also a TSB issued to dealers for the shuddering complaint. It boiled down to “take the car out back and floor it a few times” to “scrub in” the clutches with a hard launch, something most people never do. I found when the shuddering got bad, I’d take the car to an empty parking lot or something, put it in reverse (better traction), and do several WOT “launches”. This would notably improve the shuddering off the line, for a while.
I towed with mine on a semi regular basis (the tow rating was “not recommended”), a trailer of about 1000lbs- couple dirt bikes, even a Goldwing at one point. And got used to the more “assertive” departures from a stop.
From what I found the root cause of the issues was the clutches glazing over from excessive slipping (by design to simulate a conventional auto that “creeps”, mechanically the DCT is an automated manual) They actually sort of need to be driven hard, which for a commuter economy car, is not how anyone drives it. And also sort of what I credit to mine making it to 130k….or like double what seemingly a lot of them make it before total failure. In the time I had it, I literally never saw the check engine light, or any sort of transmission error or overheat notice.
I only got rid of the car as my company changed it’s policy on who’s entitled to vehicles. My position technically was, but I honestly barely ever drove it, and you also had to agree to now let them install a nannycam/GPS tracker that would email your boss if you exceeded 75mph or someone cuts you off and you have to hit the brakes too hard. Rather than just report the odometer each month, now you also had to use the nannycam’s “app” to report what each individual trip was for, tie it to a client/job #, ect or it was assumed to be “personal” use. Uhh, no thanks. I just returned the car. Went and bought a used Maverick. Ahhhh….a conventional hydraulic automatic again.
My parents had a 2006 Ford Focus that lasted for 230k miles before the transmission failed. They bought a 2016 Focus (new) and after 80k miles, the PowerShift transmission is on the 4th clutch pack. I always laugh when my Dad sends me a picture of the “Quality is Job #1” banner at the dealership when he gets the car serviced. Ford: Fix Or Recall Daily
As much as it pains me, I guess I’ll go with the little refrigerator. It looks like it had been taken better care of and can hold a decent amount of kit. My hatred for the PT Bruiser has waned over the years and I’m not winning any image awards with either, so that’s my vote today.
My wife (then fiancé) had an early PT and I couldn’t get her out of it soon enough. It had some miles on it and was starting to nickel and dime her. I f*ing hated those things. There aren’t many cars I was embarrassed to be in, but that was one of them. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so rash. It worked fine and didn’t eat much. She ended up in a newer Focus hatch which was pretty nice but had that damn powershift transmission which required a partial rebuild after 30k. We got rid of it before it caused us any more problems.
Sorry, I dozed off for a minute there.
the answer is always
Miatanot PT Cruiser.Nearly a quarter million miles on that PT & it still looks that nice?! California be damned, that PT was seemingly taken care of!
It already had me because it’s a PT, but mixing the looks and the mileage is something I’d roll the dice on every day, twice on Sunday.
Focus is easier to work on, is a pleasant color, and is generally fairly reliable.
Pt cruiser is probably a bit more accessible given the higher seating height (H-point) but that’s about it.
FTW (Focus: The Winner).
I dont think I have ever seen or heard reliable and PT Cruiser in the same sentence before. Give me the boring Mazda power train any day.
Having spent years commuting through Houston traffic in a first generation Focus, I am going with the blue Focus. I’m not choosing it because I have any real affinity for the Focus, in fact I hated just about everything in mine except the fuel mileage and seats, but at the same time the refreshed PT Cruiser is just as dumb on the outside but with a horrible interior plastics, awkward ergonomics, and seats designed to create back and hip pain. If I’m stuck in an undesirable car, I at least want some comfort.
Today I’ll vote for the PT LOSER (har har har). I have a serious kink for cargo flexibility, and nothing delivers on that quite like a boxy wagon.
Focus, please.
It looks like a serviceable car for doing light-duty car things and it has an actual paint color, which is nice.
I had a new PT Loser as a rental car around the time this one was built. It was not very comfortable and the accelerator pedal was basically a volume control: more pedal gave more/different noise but not much else happened. 250K miles later I suspect that situation has not improved.
I would rather be hit by a PT Cruiser than get inside one.
I went with the fjord because it is not a pt cruiser
I remember seeing that Focus re-design while covering the New York Auto Show for Autoblog. Me and EiC John Neff went and specifically checked it out.
I was appalled. Ghastly hard plastic and cheap interior.
An exterior design that was simply weird but also homely.
I had big expectations. The Focus, up until that point, had been a great compact car; well-designed, good looking, practical, and good dynamically.
This was not that. An enormous fall from grace, just a few feet from the handsome, useless dead-end Lincoln MKR that showed that there was some mojo at the company, it just skipped the Focus.
It *was* 2008. There was trouble simmering. Alan Mulally was there (introduced by Jean Jennings!)
But to this day I remain amazed that Focus design ever crawled into the light.
Well, no. Actually, I understand how it happened. Silos. Milestones at all costs. Conclusions before research.
Nobody brave enough to raise their hand and say “um, guys, Sync is cool and all, and I like the wheels on the SES, but, don’t you think it kinda….sucks?”
OTOH, the PT Cruiser was a masterstroke on multiple levels. Love it or hate it, it was clever, it was popular, it delivered on its promises.
Both of these don’t love salt, but the Focus absolutely disintegrates in a very efficient manner.
So yah. PT.
I remember when the design came out. Like most, my reaction was “what the hell were they thinking?” Then later I thought, “I bet that will be a good used-car bargain.” It was.
There were a number of questionable car design choices in that era, but from the domestic makes especially.
I remember pulling up Autoblog and the 2008 Escape and Mariner debut being among the headlines, and thinking Ford couldn’t be serious with the design. Not to mention the same old powertrains including the 200hp Duratec V6 (which they improved the next model year but still, the horsepower wars had already been going on for years).
This was when Ford was making such a fuss about the 3-bar grilles on their car lines too – then this Focus arrived with 2, and they said something to the effect of “it didn’t fit.” Maybe it was urban legend but who knows given how things were then.
I liked that 2008 update of the Escape – I think I actually wrote the post aggregating the press release for Autoblog and made a play on their “bold moves” pabulum tagline.
And that Duratec V6 was GREAT the next year when they gave it the cam-torque driven VVT phasers for 240 HP. It felt nearly as punchy as the 3.5 Cyclone that was ALL NEW then. Not a great harbinger, but they got around that by throwing turbos on the new engine to make the EcoBoost (Twinforce was a cooler name tho)
But that Fusion looked cheap AF from the jump. The trim-free rear window just stuck over the hole with urethane. The brutal cost-reduction (I love a clean design, but this was like ’60 Falcon austere because anything nice costs money.)
I can’t recall being as flummoxed by any production car since. Maybe it was because I was relatively green and it was a formative experience.
I did come to like the Escape too and Ford started doing a lot of different styling/design options. It was ultimately the right product for the time as they continued to make updates over the years. I think part of it for me on intro was that it was earlier in the next round of designs in the segment, as it started getting a few funkier designs (see: 3rd gen CR-V), and squared/boxier designs were in. Much like they’ve come back around to being now.
I actually like recession-era Fords. They predicted the recession, mortgaging everything, hoarded cash, and then did these stop-gap refreshes of old designs. As was often repeated, Ford was the only “domestic” to not have to be bailed out by the feds. The result is a ton of hard plastic and recognizable parts-bin pieces, but on top of proven designs, at moderate cost. The Escape refresh still looks good with an almost classic boxy design, and the plastic interior is rugged and easy to clean (evocative of an old Jeep maybe? but without the rust and reliability issues). The 500/Taurus/Montego/Sable is one of of my favorite big boring cruisers. Fusions and Foci are almost like old Volvos in their ability to persist.
That first gen Escape has *massive* rust issues. The entire rear wheelhouse and strut mount disintegrates.
I did like them quite a bit, however; great car for the time.
The first gen Fusion was great. It was also a Mazda, which is why it was great. Now, they’re rustbuckets.
The Five Hundred and Montego were a great replacement for the Crown Vic that they didnt’ know how to sell and made too drastically spartan. The sweet spot for those is the Taurus re-naming and new interior, before they became the last-gen Taurus, which was a repeat of the ’70s big-outside, not-as-big-inside thing.
Oh, and those DID start life as Volvos. Ford really only survived the recession because of the F-Series and platforms from Volvo and Mazda.
I’m not in the rust-belt, so a little less in tune with rust issues. I know the rocker panels on the 08-10 Focuses are an issue. My work (local gov) still has circa ’10-’11 Fusion hybrids in the fleet, typically with only 20k miles are so and they’re pleasant to drive and still very solid. For awhile I kept an eye out for any auctions of them but eventually decided to just buy a new car. Yes, the Taurus re-name, or a black Sable even better.
Meh. I was going to flip a coin to decide between these two sleep aids, but that was more effort than I was willing to expend. I voted for the PT Cruiser because it was first.
This is a neither day for me, if that isn’t obvious. I’m happy I don’t have to drive either one of these things.
I’ll take the Focus, because it’s blue.
Same. I’m done driving cars in boring colors.
And because it’s not a PT Loser.
If it was one of the earlier PTs, I probably would have gone in that direction. I mean, if you’re gonna PT, you might as well lean into one with all of the PT-ness, right? Comparing the one here with the most boring Focus brings that to light for me. If we’re going boring, well…get the one that has the wheels instead of hubcaps, I guess. I’ve driven one as a rental for a bit, and nicknamed it “the spud” for good reason. There’s really nothing there for a driver apart from it being a *car*, but if that’s what you need – this is a *car*
Having driven both. The seats in the PT are torturous, hard no.