Which High-Mileage Hero Would You Pick? 2007 Pontiac Vibe vs 2008 Chevy Impala

One thing about Midwestern drivers that I don’t think people in other places understand is the sheer distances we are willing to travel by car. A town two hours away can still be considered “local.” Gotta go to Chicago, or Minneapolis, or Detroit for a function? Of course you’re going to drive. You’ll bitch about “getting around the bottom of the lake,” but you’ll do it. So you end up with some big numbers on the odometers, most of them put there at eighty miles an hour.

Well, this is a surprise … yesterday’s vote is a dead-even tie! Flip a coin to choose, I guess; I don’t think you can go too far wrong with either choice. There were some concerns about the Prius’s high-voltage battery pack, and a lot of grumbling about the Honda Element’s beat-up sheetmetal, but neither complaint tipped the scales in one car’s favor.

So I guess the tie goes to the author. I’m taking the Element, mainly for the greater ground clearance. Snowplow drivers just love to block the entrances to driveways and parking lots, and it’s nice to be able to punch through if you need to. The polls on these posts remain open indefinitely, though, so if the outcome changes by Friday when I do the roundup, I’ll go with whichever car is leading at that point.

Looking for cars this week has been a bit of an eye-opener. It seems like there are still plenty of deals to be found at the cheap end of the market. Could it be that used car prices are settling down after the COVID-induced madness? Hard to say. I don’t think $1,000 beaters are coming back, but if you can spare a few hundred more, it’s looking like you can do okay. Like these two, for example.

2007 Pontiac Vibe – $1,650

Engine/drivetrain: 1.8-liter DOHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD

Location: Wauconda, IL

Odometer reading: 230,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives well

For a quarter of a century, New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. in Fremont, California built cars based on Toyota designs with General Motors badging. The cars were good deals when they were new, but on the used market, they had an almost magical combination of attributes: Toyota reliability and GM depreciation. This made them phenomenal values if you were looking for a cheap car. The earlier Chevy Nova and Geo Prizm models are getting thin on the ground, but it’s still easy to find a cheap Pontiac Vibe like this one.

The Vibe is mechanically the same thing as a Toyota Matrix, which is basically just a Corolla station wagon. And Corollas run forever. The 1ZZ-FE engine in the Matrix and Vibe has an un-Toyota-like reputation for oil consumption, but at 230,000 miles, this one seems to be doing all right. Still, do yourself a favor and check the oil when you fill the gas tank. (Honestly, that’s not a bad habit to get into with any older car.) A Vibe with a stickshift is more fun, but the automatic ones are still nice little cars to drive, and Toyota automatics hold up well.

The interior is in really good shape for the mileage and price. You don’t usually see cars this cheap with interiors this clean. There’s a lot of wear on stuff like the buttons on the stereo, but the seats are intact, and it’s nice and clean. There are even vacuum marks in the carpet in the cargo area. See, folks, this is how you present a car for sale. I’d have taken the paper mat out of it, though.

It’s faded outside, and there’s a big ol’ dent in one rear quarter panel, but other than that it doesn’t look bad at all. Keep in mind, though, that all that gray part on the bottom is plastic, and it could be hiding any manner of nasty surprises. But the Vibe doesn’t seem to be terribly rust-prone. If the underside has been kept as clean as the interior, it could be just fine.

2008 Chevrolet Impala LT – $1,500

Engine/drivetrain: 3.5-liter OHV V6, four-speed automatic, FWD

Location: Stevens Point, WI

Odometer reading: 241,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives well

Looking at the cheap end of online car classifieds as much as I do, I see a lot of Chevy Impalas for sale. The nameplate came back in 2000, replacing the Lumina, and continued for twenty years. Chevy sold a bazillion of them, especially in the middle of the country, and they seem to have staying power. I chose this one because it looks particularly nice for particularly cheap. You’ll have to go to a smallish town in the middle of Wisconsin to get it, where it has probably lived its whole life.

This Impala has the base engine, a 3.5-liter V6 that can trace its lineage all the way back to 1980, and an automatic transmission that’s almost as old. Both have had all sorts of improvements and refinements over the years, of course, and they combine to give this car the sort of “run like crap forever” reliability that GM cars have come to be known for. This one runs very well, though, according to the seller, and it must have been cared for to have attained this sort of mileage. The tires were replaced a year ago and the battery a year and a half ago, according to the seller, and they say the car has “always been reliable.”

It’s a pretty fancy Impala, with leather bucket seats and a center console. I’m pretty sure a bench seat and a column-mounted shifter were still standard at this point. It has heated seats, which are a nice little bonus for cold Wisconsin mornings, and the air conditioning and heat both work fine. It shows a little wear and tear inside, but not much at all for the mileage.

The photos in this ad aren’t great, but I don’t think this car is all that rusty either. The rocker panels and rear wheel arches look intact, and that’s where you see rust on these a lot of times. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some underneath, of course. These cars also have a tendency to rust out the front subframe, which holds up important parts like the engine and front suspension, so take a look under there and make sure it isn’t about to crumble.

It stands to reason that cars like these with lots of miles on them have been better maintained than average. And these two look like they’ve been cared for cosmetically as well as mechanically. It’s remarkable what running a car through a car wash a few times a winter can do for its longevity. They won’t last forever, of course, but they should both have some life left. And at these prices, if you get a couple of years out of a car, you can’t really complain. Which one would you go for?