premier voiture dans la belle province

[Monhomme]

I don't wanna be the Party breaker!! But , it's not real, i gonna begin to talk in english anywhere in this forum... So please, make an effort, and keep on learning french, man!!! Somebody here, looked like interested to help you!!!

No hard feeling....

[Godzila]

I don't wanna be the Party breaker!! But , it's not real, i gonna begin to talk in english anywhere in this forum... So please, make an effort, and keep on learning french, man!!! Somebody here, looked like interested to help you!!!

No hard feeling....

I tried French in the beginning of this topic. However I do study French and this year I even might graduate from Masters program in UdeM, but I don’t think that before I will buy a car level of my written French will improve until the point when I will communicate freely in the forum. However I understand French I just can’t write well since I am only about 10 month here.

[BedZ]

Keep on going Godzilla!

Still, It is quite hard to learn such a complicated language like French. I have family (ancestors I should say ) which comes from Ukraine and I can`t understand a single word!

[Godzila]

Thank you, I can easily communicate in Ukrainian if there such a need But I didn’t pass my French course this semester.

Lately I started to think also in other direction.
Why should I spend 10000 CAD on the car even with warranty . May be it will be better to buy something cheap and to prepare in advance some amount of money for reparations.

Here some points why I think so:

1)For example if I will buy an 10000 car I will want to make it a full warranty and it will cost me about 1800 a year and if I buy an old cheap car I pay about 400CAD a year. So 1400 CAD cheaper a year. (And I will definitely make a warranty because investment of 10000 is something that I would like a warranty on)

2) Also more expensive 10000 CAD car will loose more than 1000 CAD of a value a year and cheaper and older car will probably loose less of value each year. (But this is not a main point)

So if buy 2000-3000CAD car and I prepare 1000+CAD for reparations even if I use those 1000 CAD during the firs year I will spent the same on warranty for the newer car during first year. So eventually by buying cheap car I will save money even if I will have to invest on reparations.


I got a proposition from friends of mine to buy a FORD WINDSTAR 1995 in excellent condition for 2,500.00$ however the motor is too big for me(not very economic) and this model is not recommended by all car related publishers also transmission is automatic and I like manual.

[Chang]

What a dilemna, eh?

Of course, a 10,000$ car will tend to be much more expensive than, let's say, a 4,000$ car, especially for insurance, depreciation and repairs. But it depends on what you want. As far as I know, you want it manual, economical, reliable and/or cheap to repair. But now, for how long do you want to keep it? Do you know if you will have a job soon or not?

If your financial situation is precarious, I would tend to go for a 4,000$ car, which might be much less reliable, though, but also probably easier to repair. Then once you have a good job, you sell the car and take a better one. The good point about 4,000$ cars, and you mentionned it, is that they will tend to loose less value than 10,000$ cars. You could even resell it at the same price you've paid!

What to check in the case of 4,000$ is the total distance the car made, and double-check it with a good mechanical inspection. A hint: american models tend to lose value quite rapidly. However, if they were well maintained and have a low number of kilometres on them, they might be an excellent option, as they are much cheaper to repair than import models. But about the Windstar 1995, you are right, do not touch it! However, if someone talks to you about a cheap Ford Escort, it might be interesting because the powertrain comes from Mazda.

[Godzila]

Tnk u,

So as I saw from the Hebdo and auto123 sites for 4000CAD I can have Ford Escort 1998 manual 5 doors(wagon), 2 or 1.9 liter. (By the way what engine is better 2.0 or 1.9? and what model is better LX or SE SW ?)

This is cheapest example of this type of car I saw online:
http://www.auto123.com/fr/used/searc....spy?id=384368
(3.500) the expensive is about 5000. So I think 4K will be a resonable price, is it?

At least I can go now to dealer and I know about what car to ask him.

[Chang]

Yeah, this one looks fine.

However, about the engine, I don't know. In those two, one is from Mazda and the other is from Ford! But which is which... My hunch is that the 1.9L is from Mazda and the 2.0L is from Ford.

As I told you, those Ford Escort (1993-1999) are a good opportunity to buy a good car that will be reliable enough, cheap to repair and affordable. Ford has an overall horrible reliability reputation, which reduces the value of the used cars of the make. So you can have something recent and not very worn for a reasonable price.

Just make sure to perform a complete inspection on it, to see if it really has the same amount of kilometres that the odometer claims, and to see if it was not involved in a major accident.