> There's an incredible amount of value in simply not worrying if your car will run when you need it to.

True, being able to know for sure you can get to work (or wherever important) is a huge peace of mind. And more than peace of mind, can be critical to remaining employed, etc.

A new car does not guarantee you that. I've had partners who are way more into new cars than me and those new cars have failed to be usable in various ways.

A brand new EV was in the shop for 3 weeks. Oops, can't go to work.

A near-new car had an ECU lock up so no way to start it. Call a tow truck to the dealer ($$$) and took a week ($$$$).

A near new EV had an EV-specific problem: it refused to charge. Car ran fine, but couldn't charge so only so many miles left. Drive to dealer, took a few days. At least warranty covered it.

> In many cases it might be better for someone to go deeper into debt on the car if it means they will be able to focus and perform better at work.

Going into debt for a car (a fast depreciating asset) is always a terrible idea. If you're super rich and can afford it, fine, have fun. But for anyone counting money, it's the second worst financial decision you can ever make (second only to carrying credit card debt).

Back to having reliable transportation, which is super important for most people.

Solution? Buy two used cars for way less than half of a new car which can still fail.

I only buy cheap used cars, but always have more than one available. Occasionally one needs maintenance and is out of commission for a few days. That's fine, I have another one (actually a few more, but even one more would do). All my cars put together cost no more than an average new car today. And insurance is way cheaper since they're all old beaters.

It's like servers. You can spend gazillion on the highest end server but it can still fail resulting in downtime. Or you buy a few cheap servers for redundancy and accept that failure is ok and redundancy is in place.

People say buying used car is a lottery, but so is buying a new released car model. I've seen people having to send their brand new shiny car to the shop on a regular basis. The odds of getting a good experience are higher than blindly buying a second hand car with unknow history but not necessarily much better than buying a 20y old car (whose typical failure points are well known by that point) with complete documented history and knowing a good maintenance shop.

Usually buying a new car that already went to a facelift is your best bet as it means it has been significantly long enough in the market to get most of its early gremlins known and sorted.

Having said that I would now only consider buying a new car if I can pay it in one installment. I once loaned a new car and I regretted it immediately. Car was good but the amount I paid each month would have been better spent/invested elsewhere. I now drive a 20y old car that I paid cash last year. I checked before buying what were the main failure point (CVT transmission if not maintained properly) and bought a car with all the invoices and documentation checking it had been maintained properly and had her CVT oil changed. I expected a few things to fix (audio speaker, shocks) and negociated taking those into account.

The car drive very well, is spatious and comfortable, I could afford replacing it if it died suddently. I would only consider a new car if I decided to go electric but gas price would need to multiply by 3 at the very least. I've seen people going EV then back to gas when they realized that after ~8 years of use their EV needed a battery replacement whose cost negated any saving on gas. I think battery price needs to go down for more EV adoption. Nobody wants to buy a second hand EV if it needs a usd10-15k for a new battery and an EV becomes pretty much unsellable at this point without a replaced battery.

There's an incredible amount of value in having a job. In caring about your job. In having a job where it matters if you perform well or not. In being in a position to engage with less scrupulous financiers. In stability. In having opportunities in the first place.

For me a loan would be far more stressful than fixing a 20 year old car, but I have worked for myself for 15 years so my priorities are probably skewed

Hubberman says spiking cortisol in the morning is good. So the $1000 car can solve that problem.

If it fits, it's not the wrong year. I once put an exhaust manifold from a 95 Civic into a 98 Civic (replacing its cracked one that was filling the cabin with toxic exhaust fumes). I had gone to a Honda dealer to inquire about a new one; it cost too much, but the guy gave me some free nuts for bolting on a used one before I went on my merry way. Did the work myself. I seem to remember those things have two oxygen sensors that had to be moved from old to new.

I cycle everywhere in Shanghai and I would not even buy a bike if I lived in the US. Motorcycles are for wannabe organ donors. Maybe I’d change my mind if robocars took over from human driven ones but I’d be hesitant about commuting by bike in Ireland, never mind anywhere in the US. Good bike infrastructure is rare.

> I'm sure there are always some models available under 20K

Since you are sure, can you name a few?

You can't because none exist. There are no new cars in the USA for less than 20K.

The alternatives offered here are nonsensical. Where in the US does one buy this youtube solar car or KEI cars? Nowhere, that is where. They are not sold in the USA.

Golf carts are legal on hardly any roads so that is another non-starter unless you live in a neigborhood where they are allowed and never plan to go anywhere outside of it.

Cycling is great, that is the only practical suggestion on the list. But of course a bike is not a car so if someone actually needs a car, a bike is not a car.

For anyone poor who needs cheap transportation, old beater cars are the best.

Don't have to be poor either, for anyone who doesn't want to throw good money away at depreciation, old cars are the best deal. As an engineer in Silicon Valley I could technically afford many kinds of expensive cars but I've yet to ever spend more than 20K on any car or truck. Buy used, keep forever, that's the best.

> Buying a new cheap car is the safest

There is no such thing as a new cheap car.

Poor people can't afford a new $13K car. EVs also make less sense if you live in an apartment.

I always wanted to try a three one the tree, just cause they were so different. Alas all the cars I've ever owned were 5 or 6 speeds. Today I drive an EV with no gears. Maybe someday a collector will trust me with his car - but I wouldn't myself with something classic.

Are you able to do your own work though? I use and prefer old cars, but I know I won't always be able to because I won't personally be able to deal with the issues on my own.

They will not get as safe as cars. They are inherently dangerous, it's like taking a car and removing every safety feature. Removing doors, windows and belts. There's a reason that there is a legal requirement in many countries to wear a helmet.

I spent some time in Vietnam back in 2005, after getting a few lifts on the the back of mopeds in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to look up some road traffic accident stats for those cities: I never took another lift like that again.

My honda NC750 at 10 years old cost me $4200. I had to replace wheels once (rubber, $600) and the transmission failed on me ($850) all within my first 8k kilometers.

My last car was a Subaru forester that did cost a little less, was older tho, on that I spent about $800 in total per year on to keep it alive, easily doing 20k kilometres a year.

Motorcycles arent so much cheaper necessarily.

Is it sitting on blocks on your lawn or does it actually roll?

My grandfather bought me a $200 Ford Taurus at a car auction. I hated that car. It was this ugly green color and handled like a boat. But I drove it for many years, mostly to part-time jobs waiting tables or working at a butcher shop when I was in college. It finally met its end one winter in Worcester, Mass when the road salt ate through the flange that held the exhaust pipe on. This happened while idling in the parking lot in front of a Jo-Ann Fabrics store. If you’ve never experienced an unmuffled V6, think twin engine turboprop loud. A kind employee at Jo-Ann came up with a clever solution to hold the exhaust pipe against the chassis using baling wire so that I could at least drive it without the exhaust pipe dragging on the ground. I continued to drive that car, until my neighbors complained that the “tank noise” was waking them up in the morning. I replaced that car with another car that was even worse, but that’s another story.

I am comfortably middle class now. I still buy budget cars because I can’t get past how outrageously expensive most cars are now. But even now I still think, every time I sit in my new (well, three year old) car: wow, this is awesome. I don’t know if my friends think those same thoughts, because I would be honestly a little embarrassed to explain why I feel that way.

This made me laugh nostalgically. A Geo Prism was one of my first "$1000 cars" as a kid. Fun little car, but once it hit 40 it started shaking like a tree. I always joked that if I drove it on the highway it would shake itself apart around me and I would end up with suspended in air with only a seat and a steering wheel left, looney tunes style, before plummeting to the ground.

I sold it off for a different $1000 car before it happened, but sounds like that's precisely what happened to you!

Very few people buying a new car keep it long enough to make it cheaper than buying $5-10k cars.

The last cheaper used car I bought, I kept for about 10 years, it was $10k. I sold it to my brother in-law after that, who had it another 5 years… it would have gone longer, but he didn’t realized I had changed the timing belt before I sold it to him, so he misjudged how long the one he put on would last, and it destroyed the engine… anyway, let’s go with it..

The last new car I got, was relatively inexpensive, as far as new cars go, at $35k. If a $10k used car ran for 15 years, I’d have to keep that $35k car for over 50 years to make it worth it.

New cars are almost never financially justifiable. And that new car will run into the same maintenance issues and costs as the used one as it ages.

The nicer the car, the worse this equation gets, as increased car pricing translates to luxury, not quality. This makes them very different from work boots.

At that tier you buy minimum coverage liability. That coverage is pretty cheap, but even so, many choose to risk it.

You can't legally forego insurance (at least in the USA). But comprehensive insurance is silly to pay for an old car so you buy only liability so it's a lot cheaper.

You get the absolute bare minimum required by your state, it basically just covers the other driver you hit. It's pretty awful since if you are badly injured beyond what their underinsured driver's coverage is for, you're likely not going to get a lot of money. You'll definitely get everything their policy states but the remainder comes out of your own uninsured motorist coverage and health insurance. People that buy bare minimum coverage typically don't have a lot of assets so there'll be nothing to recover from them directly.

Supposedly about 20% of drivers in El Paso are uninsured, so yes?

Usually, normal insurance is reasonable, or if it's not, you get liability only because the difference in cost is enough to buy another car after a few years.

Unfortunately there's a fair bit if industry built around charging people who are stretched financially more, but it's possible to avoid that.

I just carry liability. There's no point in comprehensive coverage on such a car. My car insurance costs about $500/yr.

I drove a $1000 car for a long time back in my poor days. You could get minimum liability insurance for $50/month or even less. Just whatever you needed to be able to drive legally. Thankfully I was never in any crashes but I always drove with the expectation that crashing would be financially ruinous and tried to be extra careful.

They typically carry liability

I still drive a '97 4runner that I bought for 5k around 2020. I've probably put 5k into repairs. I've spent less on it than anything I could buy new, and it will probably outlast us all. Nearing 300k miles on it now.

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

Also: "Don't be snarky."

(FWIW I don't think you meant to do either of these things, but the worst internet patterns propagate unintentionally.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How do you expect their material conditions to improve if nobody attempts to get more stuff to them?

I doubt the "HN crowd" was about to do anything, but it'd be better if someone saw some sort of market opportunity here. It sounds pretty miserable not being able to get to a well paid job. I personally appreciate all the people who lent me money and sold me cars. It enabled a lot of income for me, over a lifetime.

No sane poor person would buy a used Mercedes. Parts and repair would cost more than the car. The only people that would think a $1000 Mercedes is worth it would be rich.

I'm sure this post will start dozens of AI startups to help poor people with their car buying experience.

What about selling busses and trains, and buildings bike lanes and train tracks? Loans and cars aren't the solution to loans and cars, but there are solutions.

Too late – we're going to see "Show HN" posts of vibe coded apps related to this in 48 hours

Well that was random

Is this sarcasm? Serious question. At least half of HN is autistic. Anywhere there’s friction there’s a market opportunity. Everyone knows that. So this must be sarcasm.