I’ve been doubling the price limit every day this week, and now we’re all the way up to eight thousand dollars, not an insignificant sum for most people. It’s still a lot less than even the cheapest new car, but it’s an amount many of us would have to finance. So a car in this price range has to be something really nice, maybe even a bit special. I think I’ve found a couple of choices that fit that brief.
Yesterday, at $4,000, we were looking at vans. It’s amazing to me how much people still love the Mazda 5. It’s not a car you would think would have such staying power, but it resonated with a lot of owners, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say anything bad about their experience with one, except maybe rust. It’s not that the Honda Odyssey is a bad choice at all; it’s just that it’s not a Mazda 5.
To find a place in our garage, however, one of these two would have to replace an existing vehicle. And the Mazda isn’t big or special enough to do that. The Odyssey could take the place of either my truck (with all but the front seats removed) or my wife’s Yukon (with the rearmost seats removed). Not that I would make such a trade, but technically, I could. If the Mazda were a manual, I could make a case for an addition to the fleet. But it isn’t.
We’re well and truly out of the realm of shitboxes now, at this price. That’s not to say you can’t find plenty of dreadful $8,000 cars for sale, but my intention this week was to show the best of what’s available at each price tier, not the worst. Both of these cars are clean, low-mileage, and nice enough that you wouldn’t feel embarrassed to be seen in them. They’re not particularly fancy, or high-performance; they’re both just really pleasant cars. And that’s not nothing. Let’s take a look.
2000 Toyota Avalon XLS – $7,800
Engine/drivetrain: 3.0-liter DOHC V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Austin, TX
Odometer reading: 73,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
I’m a fan of some pretty noisy music. I love punk, metal, and garage rock. Basically, if it’s got Glenn Danzig, loud guitars, and/or crappy production values, I’m in. (That link is not safe for work, just so you know.) But the thing about music like that is that it gets tiring after a while. You can’t just rock out to noisy stuff like that all the time. Sometimes you want something calm and soothing, a nicely-produced tonic for jangled nerves. Something like, well, “Avalon.”
Much like Bryan Ferry’s masterpiece, Toyota’s Avalon is slick, comforting, and flawlessly put together. It’s more special than a Camry, but not as highfalutin as a Lexus. Only one engine and transmission combination is available, which for this generation was a 3.0-liter V6 and a four-speed automatic, both utterly competent and completely invisible. The Avalon is like a good butler: it does what you ask of it without drawing attention to itself. This example has just 73,000 miles to its name, spread out over two owners, and the seller says it drives great.
I guess you could call this a luxury car, but in the old Mercedes-Benz sense of the term. It doesn’t have a lot of silly gadgets to impress your friends, or absurd materials that are there just so you can say you have them; it’s just comfortable, un-fussy, and extremely well made. As you would expect from such low mileage, this one is in very good condition inside. The seller says it was never smoked in, either, which is nice to hear.
It was repainted recently; my guess is that the Texas sun did a number on the clearcoat, so the seller had it redone. The fact that it was considered a nice enough car to repaint says a lot. The Avalon isn’t what you’d call a stylish car, but it’s handsome enough. No one is going to comment on its appearance either way, and sometimes that’s nice.
2012 Volvo C70 T5 – $7,950
Engine/drivetrain: Turbocharged 2.5-liter DOHC inline 5, five-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Fremont, CA
Odometer reading: 118,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
I know how a lot of you feel about convertibles, and because of that I debated showing this one to you. But this isn’t your typical convertible. For one thing, it has a retractable hardtop, and for another, it’s a Volvo. If there’s one company we should trust to make a nice, solid, safe droptop, it’s Volvo. This is the second generation C70, which replaced both the coupe and soft-top convertible versions of the previous generation with one car.
This is the T5 model, with a turbocharged five-cylinder engine driving the front wheels through a five-speed automatic. The seller is a dealership, so take the claims of “regular oil changes” with a grain of salt, but a clean Carfax report and a fresh smog certificate are encouraging signs. Best to bring a mechanic friend along if you don’t know what you’re looking at, though.
I have to say, I really love the interior of this car. It’s a sleek design, and it looks nice and bright. It’s in good condition, too. I really hope this car has a good sound system, because it deserves one. It deserves a nice sunny day and a wide open road, too.
It’s too bad there isn’t a photo in the ad with the top fully up, because this is one convertible that looks equally good with it up or down. That’s the advantage of a retractable hardtop; put the top up, and it’s just a coupe. I do have to say that I’m not crazy about the black wheels. That’s one trend that can die out any time.
So that’s what eight thousand bucks can get you these days: a nice but somewhat bland sedan, or a cool but slightly impractical hardtop convertible. Okay, it will get you lots of other things as well, but these are the two that caught my eye. Which one would you pick?
Coin flip. Transportation? Avalon. Cruising? Volvo.
If you do the typical Friday run-off, I’m saving $6000 and getting the Vibe.
I like Volvos, but the interior pics of the Avalon won me over. It looks very clean and comfortable, and I like highway cruisers. Bonus is that it’s old enough for classic plates which means dirt cheap registration and insurance. If it was local I’d worry about rust, but being from TX there’s no worry there.
I could use a comfortable car, and since the Volvo isn’t a manual for the fun-factor, I’m going Avalon. I also don’t get the feels from convertibles, like at all. I’ll take the bike when I want to feel the breeze.
I will take Japanese Grandpa car. I’m starting to get to the age a freeway cruiser sounds nice. But I’m still young enough to go “but that would look really good on airbags with deep wheels, full VIP, right?”
…OK, that would ruin the cush.
Avalon! This was pretty easy…I like both but gotta go Avalon since it is really nice, has such low miles, and will run forever. While the convertible would be fun, I’ve never really been that much into Volvos- the classic ones are pretty cool though. I think it will still be kinda fun to cruise in the Avalon…maybe I’ll manual swap it for fun, ha ha
This is not the showdown for me (neither is my speed), but I’m going with the better deal: the Avalon. I’ve never viewed them as much more than a nice Camry, but admittedly, this is a pretty decent car for the price. The Volvo is certainly more interesting, but the Toyota is the deal today.
I’m down there as having voted for the Volvo, but I’m starting to reconsider. After spending more than five or ten minutes reading from any given news source these days, a cruise in a big soft comforting marshmallow of a vehicle, insulated from noise and racket, with some sort of soothing music playing might be just what the psychiatrist ordered.
One thing about the S60 I had was wished I’d looked longer for a T5 instead of settling for the 2.5T. Except for the wheels and ? how many times has the trans fluid been flushed, this checks all the boxes for me, and I need a midlife crisis convertible. Those seats are a great place to see the world from. I can find Avalons all day even in my podunk town. Not this.
Came here to vote for the Volvo, hardtop convertibles are soo cool.
But the auto transmission and salt in the oil changes make this one hard to stomach..
and the Toyota is just so good – low miles and a clean highway cruiser.
Black rims are awful and I wish it would stop. I’ve sprayed some rims myself, but graphite on a silver car isn’t a bad look at all. Just stop with the all-black everything. (sincerely, old guy who remembers when if you got black trim and everything it meant you bought the poverty spec)
I voted Avalon, but honestly? Today’s a “both” day.
I love the boring, comfortable competency of the Avalon (and that is, astonishingly, the market price for these cars). I’ve been toying with the idea of getting one myself, albeit a little newer. But a handsome, reasonably priced convertible for warm days would be great, too.
The wheels on the Volvo are probably telling a tale of woe, so Avalon for me.
This is a weird zone of car buying.
They’re too expensive to buy in cash, as most don’t have $8k kicking around. But, they’re too cheap/old to finance, because if I’m financing something, I might as well get something newer.
I think the Avalon could be a good highway car for someone who puts on serious miles, but has to do the highway flyer bit on a budget. (hint hint to the Autopian writer who knows someone that might find this car useful)
The drivetrain is pretty stout. It’s a Texas car, so it’s not rusted out despite being 26 years old. It seems well maintained (see interior and repaint), but make sure the timing belt has been done. One could probably rack up another relatively painless 100k highway miles comfortably for $8k, which is pretty cheap per mile.
If something bad happens to it, well, it’s not like it’s happening to a car costing 2-4 times as much.
I’m just past my highway commuter days, so it would be wasted on me.
I’ve never had a convertible so, what the heck, Volvo it is. Those wheels have got to go, though!
Both great, if overpriced today. Biggest red flag for me is those wheels on the Volvo….I’m guessing the dealer found the cheapest pair they could fit and threw them on. A set of nice later S60 wheels and this will clean up nice. If I really needed a commuter, it’d be the avalon because it’ll last for another 200k probably, assuming you don’t fall asleep at the wheel and put it in a ditch.
The T5 is pretty reliable too, so I’ll go with that, the overall enjoyment over the ownership will be far greater, even if it’s got half the total lifespan.
I’ve never owned a convertible, and the retractable hardtop makes this one alluring.. We get pretty decent stretches of convertible-friendly weather around here, too, so that helps. The Avalon would make a great road trip car, but the Volvo is too cool to pass up for it.
My hatred for modern Volvos (the juice ain’t worth the squeeze) knows few bounds, so the mildly overpriced Japanese Buick is the one for me. That generation of Avalon may well be one of the best cars Toyota ever made as far as fuss-free ownership, so if I was looking for another used car for Mom I just might pay it. The overpriced 2001 Camry I bought her was worth every penny, and it wasn’t as nice as this.
Not even a droptop could get me to buy another modern Volvo. And I wouldn’t buy a folding metal top from *Toyota*, never mind Volvo. At least a cloth top is reasonably easy to replace when the time comes, with a much simpler mechanism to deal with – this nonsense is ALWAYS a mechanical nightmare.
I was absolutely certain I’d be voting for the Avalon, as those ones last forever and I’m not a convertible guy, but I threw caution to the wind and went with the Volvo.
I’m a Volvo guy through and through (I currently own two) but I voted Avalon. All the hardware used to raise and lower a retractable hardtop scares me, especially as the car enters its second (and eventually third) decade.
8 grand is a lot for a 26-year-old Toyota, but maybe this one is worth it.
Both cars look really comfy right now. (Damn my poor, allergy season sleep)
I’ll say Avalon for sleeping and Volvo for driving.
What is going on with that poor Volvo’s wheels?
Sure, it’s a Toyota and has low miles, but that seat wear seems excessive. I’m betting this thing rarely ever had the engine fully warmed up by the old person that owned it bopping around town. Sure, 73,000 miles is great, but it probably also has like 73,000 cold starts.
I’ll take the Volvo.
California-cruiser Volvo for me. I ain’t going to Texas and I ain’t payin’ no eight grand for a 26-year-old used Toyota sedan.
I love the interior of that Avalon – but that body style always reminded me of a hearse, and the black does it no favors.
On the other hand – Volvo Convertible!
Yeah, it’s the Volvo for me despite the mileage and the awful black wheels.