Sometimes you make plans and just can’t follow through on them, due to circumstances beyond your control. I had hoped to subject you to that blue PT Cruiser all week, but it appears that somebody actually went and bought the damn thing. Since the one hard-and-fast rule here is that the cars have to actually be available for sale (at the time of writing, at least), the PT is out. So instead, I found two new cheap cars.
The PT won again yesterday, which comes as no surprise to me. As some of you might have guessed, this whole week was going to be stacked in its favor – in fact, this would have been its next competitor today, so consider yourselves lucky to have been spared. I’m not sure how I would have topped that, though.
Even if that BMW were in good shape, I personally wouldn’t want it. As it sits, wrecked to an unknown degree, it’s at best a parts car, and that’s assuming the parts you need are still good. The overwhelming majority of you agreed with that assessment. But hey, if the seller really can fix it up this weekend and sell it for three grand, more power to them. But I don’t see it happening.
What was so great about that PT Cruiser is that it’s really hard to find a good-running car for $1,000 these days. You basically have to be in the right place at the right time, because they don’t stay for sale long. In fact, I fear that one or both of today’s competitors might already be gone by the time you read this. But both ads are still live at the moment, so I’m going with them. Here they are.
2003 Toyota Matrix – $1,100
Engine/drivetrain: 1.8-liter DOHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Castro Valley, CA
Odometer reading: 643,000 miles (!)
Operational status: Battery is toast, but will run and drive fine with a new one
“Toyotas run forever” is common wisdom. And indeed, a Toyota badge on a car is generally a good indication of longevity, but everything has its limits. What about a Toyota that has already run practically forever? The seller of this Matrix claims it has covered more than six hundred and forty thousand miles – an average of 28,000 miles a year over its lifetime. That’s a lot, but it’s what I would expect for a car owned by someone who works in sales and drives a lot, or something like that. But does it still have anything left to give?
The Matrix is basically just a Corolla wagon, powered by the same 1ZZ-FE four-cylinder engine and four-speed automatic transmission. It’s generally a reliable combination, but some of them have a very un-Toyota-like appetite for oil. Considering the advanced mileage, either this Matrix never had the oil consumption problems, or it was fixed ages ago. It has been sitting for a few months, though, due to a dead battery. The seller swears it will run and drive just fine with a new battery, but you know the old saying: “Trust, but verify.”
There are no photos of the interior in the ad, so I can’t comment on its condition. After six hundred thousand miles, I have to imagine it’s pretty tired. Probably trashed, actually. If it’s too bad, you might not want to put it back into daily service, but gut the interior, and it could make a good rallycross car or something.
It’s banged up outside; in fact, I don’t think there’s an entirely straight body panel left on it. The paint isn’t great either. But it’s a Toyota, it (allegedly) runs well, and it’s eleven hundred bucks. Who cares what it looks like?
2006 Ford Crown Victoria LX – $900
Engine/drivetrain: 4.6-liter OHC V8, four-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Everett, WA
Odometer reading: 200,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Here’s another car known for longevity: the Ford Crown Victoria. As the default cop car and taxi for decades all over the country, Crown Vics have racked up some astonishing miles in downright abusive conditions. Ford made improvements along the way; this 2006 model is almost the final iteration, and the best. This is a civilian-spec LX model, not the Police Interceptor, but it does have the revised chassis with rack-and-pinion steering and other refinements.
Like all of the big Panther sedans, this Crown Vic is powered by Ford’s 4.6-liter “Modular” V8, driving a solid rear axle through a four-speed automatic. It’s a strong drivetrain, if not a particularly efficient one. But when it comes to cheap cars, fuel economy matters less than reliability, and the seller of this one says it runs and drives well. It has been driven daily until recently, it sounds like, and 200,000 miles is peanuts for these things.
It’s a little grubby inside, but in good condition. It’s a whole lot fancier and nicer than the police versions, with leather seats and all kinds of power goodies. There’s no word from the seller on whether anything is broken in there, but on a $900 car, do you really care?
The paint is fried, but it doesn’t show any signs of rust or damage. It has nice nine-spoke alloy wheels, which, if my information is correct, means it could have the “Handling And Performance Package,” with a little more horsepower, a little stiffer suspension, and a lower rear axle ratio for better acceleration. If so, it’s a nice bonus.
A thousand bucks won’t get you much these days, especially if you miss out on a really great PT Cruiser. But I guess either of these would be a good substitute. So which will it be: a Toyota with a bazillion miles, or a tough old Ford sedan?
Yes! Once again this is my opportunity to mention that the Toyota Matrix has a Costco Pumpkin Pie capacity of 113! https://imgur.com/a/f71PQiy
That Matrix is just a terrible deal.
There are a bunch for sale near me in decent condition for around $1400.
Now come on…
That just wasn’t fair to the poor Toyota. Already had a rough life, and you led it like lambs to the slaughter against a Crown Vic?!
Condition seriously favors the Ford. Even if the Matrix had 200k, it looks trashed.
If the mileage was closer I’d be curious who would win. Both of these are generally well liked cars.
But for me the answer is always Crown Vic, I had one and it is still the car I most regret selling and one of the most fun cars I’ve owned.
400,000 reasons to choose the Ford.
The answer is always Panther.
I was never a huge fan of the matrix and that one is rough but I guess still going. Crown vic is definitely worth the money especially as it appears to be fairy well optioned civilian version.
I’d love a Matrix, just not that particular Matrix, at over 600,000 miles, non running, no interior pictures I’d rather have Leo from the Matrix give me piggy back rides everywhere instead trusting even a Toyota that has more miles than the entire Space Shuttle fleet at retirement.
And it looks like someone agreed with their wallet today. The Panther is gone!
I’d vote PT Cruiser again against either of these, but rules are rules, so Crown Vic for me. Been in several (never in the back behind cage wire, I swear), and they are very comfortable, gas mileage be damned.
I’ve been chauffeured in one of these police models, what they lack in comfort they make up for with easy cleaning
Well there’s that.
Wouldn’t these Matrix odo stop at 299,999 like the contemporary Corolla?
Anyway, I can’t even say it’s parts car material, probably a Lemons candidate at best but not for that coin.
Crown Vic all day long
It’s hard to get me to vote against a Matrix; they’re some of the best economy cars of the past 25 years. But that’s not really a Matrix, it’s the corpse of a Matrix. I mean, yeah, maaaaaybe with a new battery you can get more life out of it. But based on how hard of a life it’s had on the outside, and that the seller isn’t even letting us see the inside? I’m going to make the assumption that the interior is a serious dealbreaker.
Either way, 900$ for a pretty beat but more reasonably so Crown Vic reminds me of an era where this is exactly what I would expect for a 900$ beater. Solid buy.
Matrix for me. I care about fuel economy and am not interested in an old V8 Ford Panther body boat.
And given that Matrix is in California, it’s unlikely it has issues with rust.
Does one really need to worry about rust in a car that doesn’t run?
But according to the ad, it does run… just that the battery doesn’t hold a charge.
As a fan, I was ready to vote for the Matrix; they’re hard to beat in a showdown & this has the factory wheels. But that odometer has got to be a typo! Over 600k miles?! Sorry, I’m going with the Crown Vic.
Crown Vic by a country mile, and for the record I think I would chose a grubby Crown Vic over a convertible PT Cruiser. The cruiser would have won again over the bus, but I am really curious about this poof dust.
I was pretty torn on this one. I do think the Crown Vic is probably going to be the better car in the long run. We occasionally get snow around here and I much prefer FWD over RWD in those situations. And they’re rare. And I keep a few days’ worth of provisions, so I don’t REALLY need to go out, and I could just summon a Lyft or Uber and let them deal with it. The thing for me is I have a condo with a very narrow opening to the garage, and the Matrix would be several inches less challenging to get inside. And likely get far better fuel economy.
When I was a news photog in Cleveland, (1993-94) the station swapped out aging, but still competent Olds 88s for Crown Vics that they got as a trade out from a Ford dealership which was behind on their ad payments. Mine was a beautiful shade of green. With three official looking and functional antennae mounted on the trunk lid (two-way radio, cell phone and scanner), they looked like very unmarked detective/cop cars and it was amusing to see people slow down, get out of the way and let us through on the freeways. There was one rural town (somewhere East of Akron) where a LEO was directing traffic (totally unrelated to what we were out there for), and the cop turned on his heel to try to figure out what agency we might have been with. That made my day. I was happy to move out to the Seattle area before winter set in back there and have to drive the Crown Vic in the snow. A couple of friends said they could be a bit of a handful in wintery weather.
Now there is a good poll question for our group. If you have to go out in nasty weather would you rather trust some anonymous person or yourself?
I’ve had a few insane taxi rides over my years. One in Thailand. Several in Russia but one in Boston on the way from a hotel to a friend’s wedding. But also, that one being driven by some sort of Eastern European, whose English was so bad I never got where he was native to.
The ones in Moscow and Boston, I wish my iPhone had been a thing back then. The footage would have looked like it was from a Jerry Bruckheimer film. They were high-speed at some points. In Moscow I saw older women who didn’t appear like they could, sprint out of the roadway just before getting hit. It was pretty appalling to me.
The Thailand one was a tuk-tuk (so, relatively low-speed and named for the distinctive sound of their 2-cycle motors) we were just trying to get from one part of Bangkok to another to shoot an interview with a US expat who was running an import/export business there. This was 1985. Before we went over the border into Cambodia for our time with a small bunch of guerillas being minimally propped up by the CIA to harass the Khmer Rouge.
But the tuk-tuk guy picked us up at the hotel and we told him where we wanted to go. By then, I had been in Bangkok long enough to have a rough idea of the lay of the land and realize we were not heading to where we needed to go. I gave the driver of the Tuk-Tuk the business card the guy we wanted to interview, in case he hadn’t understood out request to go to a pretty large commercial structure.
It was English on one side and Thai on the other. He looked at both sides and rotated it 180 degrees on both and then continued in the wrong direction. I told Stan, the primary anchorman for the station I worked for, “this guy is illiterate. We need to figure out a new plan.” We bailed at the next stop light. I threw the driver a 20 baht note so that we weren’t total assholes and that his time and gas had been worth it. Or at least close.
Friends tell me that I need to write a book. I might. Or I just might want to forget it all.
“Taxis? I’ve hailed a few”
Back when I had my first Crown Vic a 1992 the Chief of Police for the City of Auburn had a 1992 in the same color. There were a couple of times I got a wave when I probably would have been pulled over if I was driving something else and it also got me through a road closed off for investigation.
I’ve got a ball peen hammer, crowbar, and duct tape. I’m ready for the Ford.
Why do we never mention that duct tape comes in several automotive paint colors?
Didn’t these Matrixes have a thing where the odometer stopped at 299,999? Either way I’m good with the Ford.
I’ve adored Matrix/Vibes since I first saw them, but come on. That poor beast needs parting out what’s left of it, and given a decent burial.
Not a fan of domestic land yachts but this one will do OK. I’ve no actual use for it unless someone needs a tow.
Crown Vic. I could use a land boat like this to tow the ol’ Alumacraft to the lake
Over 600,000 miles and no pictures of the inside makes me think this car was used as a garbage scow. That matrix may be at the end of it’s long road. Give me the big American V8 with an interior that probably won’t give me hepatitis.
Might not give you Hep, but that leather is clearly made of cancer