It was dicey taking it on the 401, no doubt there.

It was a tonne of fun to drive, once it got up to speed. It cornered surprisingly well and bounced off of many a thing without damage. Airbags? Who needs ‘em when you have bumpers half the size of the car! However, as with some cars of the era, if you didn’t drive them, they ate themselves. The body was in fine shape, but in the ten years before my wife got the car it was driven all of 30,000km. We drove it another 5 years or so, adding another 25,000km before it was donated to a friend for a demo derby. It had gotten far too expensive to fix, dieseled like mad and getting it to start on a coldish morning took a curious combination of OCDesque rituals and voodoo.

I loved that car, but I remember how fortunate I was when I upgraded to one that had 4 speakers and a cassette player.

Most people now wouldn’t accept a decontented under $10,000 car. To paraphrase Ferrari, the new inexpensive segment is a good used car, which like Mad Science says, is an infinately better car than a loss leader special.

Even the cheapest cars will make it to 100-150k miles these days with basic maintenance, meaning a 2-4 year old car still has a ton of life left in it. Not to mention the added (perceived) security blankets of “Certified Pre-Owned” and extended warranties that accompany lightly used cars.

You can get that $16k car for $10k on the used car lot with minimal wear and have a car that doesn’t scream bargain basement.