Welcome back to another fabulous week of questionable cars! This week, our mission is to see how low you are willing to go and still feel comfortable driving something daily. We’re starting off with a price cap of $1,000, and doubling it every day until we reach $8,000 on Thursday, then on Friday you will be voting on where your personal comfort cutoff lies.
On Friday, I gave you a silly scenario with the week’s winners, and you responded with some silly answers. Bravo. Despite a few rather dishonorable mentions for the big colorful Ford truck, most of you did the sensible thing and went for the Sebring or the Fusion. The Sebring won, which probably surprised some of you as much as it surprised me.
I think the Sebring is the right choice too. My mother-in-law is no longer with us, but I get the feeling she would have appreciated the comfy Chrysler convertible. The Fusion would have appealed to her sense of frugality as well, though. I could go either way on that one.
Driving a cheap car on a daily basis is not a lifestyle for everyone. I get that. I’ve been doing it for so long that whenever I actually have a nicer car, I end up needing to own a beater as well, just to have something I don’t have to worry so much about. But I know some folks can’t stand to have anything without a warranty. But the question is, where is the transition line these days? At what price point does a car start being “nice?” I know one thing: it’s not this price point. But we have to start somewhere. Let’s check out a couple of cheapies to get the ball rolling.
1998 Chevrolet Lumina – $700
Engine/drivetrain: 3.1-liter OHV V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Kenosha, WI
Odometer reading: 139,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
For a very long time, this was the unofficial car of the upper Midwest. Roughly every fourth car in any given parking lot was a Chevy Lumina. You don’t see many of them anymore; most of them went to the great parking lot in the sky ages ago. And when you do see one, it’s usually pretty rough. Time has been especially unkind to the white ones; there was something wrong with white paint in the ’90s, and it came off in sheets.
The good news is that, mechanically, Luminas are bulletproof. There is absolutely nothing special or fancy about the drivetrain: it’s GM’s 60-degree V6 and a four-speed automatic, just like millions of other cars. It has a few foibles, but they’re well-understood. Parts are cheap, repairs are easy, and maintenance is largely optional. This one runs well, and the seller says it is currently daily driven.
It’s a little grubby and dirty inside. I wish the seller had cleaned it up a little before taking the photos. I mean, I get that it’s a $700 car, but you can still take a little pride in it. They do say the air conditioning works fine. No word on the CB radio, though.
The peeling paint is actually pretty impressive: the entire hood, roof, and trunk lid are bare, and the doors and fenders aren’t far behind. There’s surface rust on the roof, but not the other panels. Is the roof not galvanized, and everything else is, I wonder? The worst rust-through seems to be around the fuel filler, which is a common spot for rust on W-bodies. It’s worth taking a look underneath to make sure it’s all structurally sound, of course.
1999 Honda Accord EX – $1,000
Engine/drivetrain: 2.3-liter OHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Addison, MI
Odometer reading: 309,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
If you’re looking for a reliable car, Honda is usually your second stop after Toyota. If a Camry is just too vanilla for you, or if you can’t find one, the Honda Accord is your car. Rust is a concern, as it has been with Hondas since the dawn of time, but other than that, you can’t go too far wrong with one. Even this one, with over 300,000 miles on its odometer, can probably still give you your thousand bucks’ worth of service.
This generation of Accord is powered by a 2.3-liter four-cylinder, in this case backed by a four-speed automatic. Yeah, I’d rather have a manual too, but at this price, beggars can’t be choosers. The seller says it has had a bunch of work done, and it runs fine, but the dashboard is lit up like Clark Griswold’s house on Christmas Eve. The check engine, ABS, and some other warning light are all on. Nothing that will keep you from getting home, but concerning nonetheless.
This one is kind of a mess inside too. What do people have against vacuuming out a car? It takes five minutes. There’s a tree air freshener hanging from the mirror, and a bag of beef jerky sitting on the passenger’s seat. Any bets on which smell is winning out?
The outside is pretty rough as well. There’s some badly-repaired damage on the passenger side, and scuffs and dings all over. What is encouraging, though, is that the rear wheel arches don’t show any signs of rust-though, and that’s often where it shows up first on these cars. Maybe it has escaped the Honda rust curse.
I have to be honest: compared to some of the heaps I was driving when these two were new, they don’t look bad at all. Pending a test drive and an inspection, I’d drive either one of them if I had to. But I know my frame of reference is a bit different from most. What say you, Autopians? If these are all you had to choose from to get to work, which one would it be?
If they tossed in an intravenous constant drip of tetanus vaccine, the Chevy.
Who am I kidding, I wouldn’t want either of these heaps parked anywhere in my neighborhood, and I am not even an HOA Karen. Gross. Not even for free, couldn’t pay me enough to park them in my yard. I’d rather walk, at least I wouldn’t be paying a grand a year for insurance and registration.
These are cheap at least. Amusingly, there is a hipster near me who is trying to flog a Volvo 245 in WORSE condition than that Honda for *$4900*. Some people’s kids…
I’ll hold my nose and take the cockroach like Chevy at less than half the miles.
I think it would be fun to buy that Lumina, then just go around and park it across the street from rental car companies and watch the look of horror on their faces as they believe they are being stalked by the ghost of a former rental car.
Ebeneezer Hertz is haunted by the ghost of Meh Car Past?
We’re in the realm of “runs poorly longer”
And the tree air freshener is always a warning sign to me, trying to hide other smells.
My wife smacked up our 94 Accord this weekend. She’s ok but the Honda isn’t. A shame since it had only 120k miles, was in very good shape and I just replaced the alternator and AC compressor. That said, the car was a penalty box to drive and I never really liked it.
No thanks on another Accord with an auto. That Lumina reminds me of my 04 Impala. It’ll just keep running to spite everyone who makes fun of it.
Hundreds of thousands of miles wishing you were driving anything else.
Exactly! My wife didn’t mind driving it, tho. I need to get her something from this century. She likes my Mom’s 2020 RAV-4 Hybrid, so something like that.
I drove one of these V6s home with a completely failed oil pump. I had a loud stereo at the time and didn’t notice the terrible sounds until I got close to home.
Changed the pump and the thing ran fine (or as well as it did before) for many more miles until I finally crashed it.
My coworker ditched his ’02 Accord when the second auto trans shit the bed, with under 200k on the clock.
V6?
Yes. It burned oil like crazy, too. His experiences with Hondas made me not want to buy one. At least his ’93 Accord almost made it to 300k miles, but god was everything under the sun wrong with it.
Now he’s driving my ’06 Altima that’s by far the nicest vehicle he’s ever owned. It’s up to 245k miles with very few actual part failures…even has the original front brakes!
“the car was a penalty box to drive”
Glad someone else sees this. I’ve been told by everyone else on the internet that a 4-cylinder Accord is a genuine sports sedan par excellence but to me they’ve long felt like a FWD economy car with a bit more driver involvement in exchange for quite a bit of NVH.
Newer ones cut down on the NVH part but were even less interesting to drive.
The engine whines and drones worse than the 1.9L Escort I had. The worst part was the 4 speed auto that always shifted at the wrong time. It might have been tolerable with a manual.
The only penalty box worse than that Accord was my Mom’s 91 Corolla with a 3 speed auto.
Given the mileage, I should probably lean Lumina, but the fact that I can smell that interior through the computer screen is not a good sign. The Accord isn’t much better, but I think I am going with it.
I was going to say Honda, but there are more red flags with that one than at a parade in Beijing.
That pushrod 3.1 gets the job done more or less forever, provided you keep on top of the failure-prone gasket issues. The transmission can be a weak point but there are some things you can do to jolly it along too, and the low low purchase price leaves plenty of room for a replacement in a few years.
And if ever there was a car that was a born candidate for a Rustoleum Roller Repaint, this is the one.
A Christmas tree of egads lights on the dash makes me stay right the heck away from the Honda.
Lumina today.
This would ordinarily be a NOPE day, but I’ll keep in the spirit this week! I don’t even buy cars from Iowa! Wisconsin and Michigan are way too far north. I’d LIKE to say Honda, but the clear dash and working A/C puts the Chevy over the top! And $300 saved.
At this price point I’m leaning towards anonymity, and the Honda will stand out less that the Lumina, though as others have pointed out, a gallon of cheap paint from Tractor supply might go farther with concealing the Lumina.
Lumina, please, he said quietly.
The mileage is quite low for the age of the car, and a full detail – including steam-cleaning of the seats – would likely bring the interior back around.
The exterior? That’s easy: knock off any remaining paint (shouldn’t take long), treat all surfaces with a rust converter and/or primer as appropriate, and spray everything in rattle-can bedliner.
Now you can do car things for the next ten years without too many worries.
“Shouldn’t take long” made me laugh out loud, seriously.
I had a ’91 Caravan that had my wife thinking it was suddenly autumn when its paint was coming off in big leaf-like flakes. She mentioned it needing paint in the presence of our niece, who then asked, “What are you going to paint on it, Auntie B?”
And that’s how I came to be driving around in a minivan with dolphins, fish and mermaids on it. Including a larger-than-life bare-breasted mermaid on the roof. The niece painted her. She was quite proud of her.
Sweetie said, “Honey, don’t you think that’s a little…much? She’s going to be a distraction to people driving, I don’t know, big trucks.” Getting the mermaid’s breasts even had been a challenge, making one bigger to catch up to the other – oops, too big, over and over – in alternating succession until Honey was satisfied.
Honey: “They’re grownups, they can handle it.” She was a very practical child. Now she’s a very practical mom. I’m quite proud of her.
Later we realized, mostly by hoots and pointing, that kids in school buses were distracted by the mermaid too.
That’s fantastic! 😀 😀 😀
Oh, you guys are my people.
It was also a point of interest when we had a very large tree taken down that was endangering the house. EVERY guy on the crew had to take a quick trip up in the bucket to look down and get the full effect of the smiling topless mermaid. She had, how shall we say, a bountiful figure.
Later Honey told us, “I patterned her after [the choir director at church].”
[Choir director] found out about that and got up on a ladder to look at the van’s roof. She sniffed disdainfully. “I’m bigger than that.”
Honey: “I can fix that!”
We thanked her for her generosity and declined.
I’ve actually owned both of these as winter beaters. Well, not a lumina but a similar age Century and I figure the engine and platform are the same so close enough. Accord was a 5 speed though. Rusted to crap but it always started up even on the coldest of nights. It was definitely more fun to drive but the Buick was comfy as all get out and the AC was ice cold. I don’t even know if the AC on the Honda worked, I never tried it and only drove the thing in the winter.
The Lumina seems like the better bet to get you through a year or two of less than ideal circumstances. At least it’ll be relatively comfortable and spacious.
And at this end of the market an extra $300 is a lot to come up with.
Yep. And that 300$ is going to be necessary to keep either of these on the road for any significant amount of time.
The Chevy scares me less, but how many cases of Little Trees is it gonna take to make that interior bearable? At least it will be an air-conditioned cool stank.
A bus pass is cheaper….
I’d rather spend my $700-$1000 on a decent bicycle than either of today’s choices.
Even 1000 feels overpriced. The only place that Accord is going is the scrap yard. I’ll take the Lumina and 20 bucks in Rustoleum White rattle cans.
I’ll take the Lumina, even if it’s only going to last one Illinois winter before that roof caves in. ABS light on the Accord might mean that the ABS sensor mounts are rusted through or enough to get it out of alignment. Happened on my Sentra, pretty sure.
Maybe I can clearcoat the Lumina Patina and preserve the impressive paint damage.
Lumina Patina is the name of my prog-rock-jazz fusion band. We pronounce Lumina luh-MEE-nuh.
Good band name.
Get any gigs at Lumiere Rouge?
I prefer the looks of the first gen (esp the Euro version), but Lumina for sure.
As Bon Scott would say, the mileage of the Honda is a touch too much, even for Japan’s second most reliable automaker.
Lumina. At this price, expectations are LOW. Functional AC?!? SOLD!!!
AC and a CB radio. What’s not to like?
What would your handle be? I nominate Mondo Bondo.
GaryTheStormtrooper?
The chevy, I would have the interior cleaned and sterilized!!!
I would then either get wire brushed, rust converter sprayed, and enamel tractor painted
or ART CAR treatment.
As long as the transmission fluid doesn’t smell burnt, that lumina will keep on running just fine until either the powertrain falls out of the car or the rear suspension pokes its way through the back seat/trunk area.
You might even get at least another 6 or 7 years out of it. At $700, that’s less than what the registration and insurance will set you back for those 6 or 7 years.
You got me to pick a Chevy over a Honda. Another weird day of choices.
I owned a Lumina. Boring but never let me down.