Heres a quick thought experiment. Imagine it's the beginning of the 20th century, lets say 1902. People still use horses for transport, and life is very slow and boring. Information travels slow and not much good ever happens. you're just an average young man, let's say a blacksmith or a steelworker.
But what if this young guy stumbled across a DeLorean and travelled into the year 2025. Imagine him walking down the street, mouth open, eyes wide, seeing what to us might look like a plethora of shitboxes, but to this time travelling dude they would all be sleek, super futuristic spaceships on wheels. Then you take him for a spin and his head almost explodes! He cant believe the speed, the roadholding, the acceleration, the braking! And this is a daewoo matiz we are talking about. Then you tell him the car could be his for the price of a woman's haircut!
What im saying people is that when it comes to the life of a car enusiast we are living through a golden age. The abundance of automotive technology has created a situation where you can buy a ridiculous amount of steel, glass, leather and clever engineering for next to nothing. I don’t know about you guys, but i’m addicted to buying cheap cars. Here’s my top 10 reasons old cheap cars are better than fancy new cars Cheaper to buy.
1. Cheaper to buy
This shouldn’t need much explaining. Theyre MUCH cheaper to buy in the first place, and that means you just buy the car outright, no monthly payments. Buying a car that drives well, has good tyres, airbags, seatbelts, power steering windows, heating, aircon and a sound system for a few hundred euros is a serendipitous side effect of 100 years of mass production . You might have to look past a few little defects, but if you buy wisely that wont be a problem for us because we old timers can fix a lot of these things ourselves. I once bought a beautiful silver supercharged mercedes slk manual for just over $1000. That was a $50,000k car new! What a steal!
2. Easy to fix
While a cheap 10 year old car will be electronics-heavy and potentially difficult to fix, the wide array of super basic 90s shitboxes are an unstoppable forces of nature.Simpler and therefore more reliable The average person could fix their car 30 or 40 years ago on their driveway with a few spanners. Nowadays everything needs to be coded in by the dealer!. Lets be honest, most people couldnt fix their way out of a wet paper bag these days anyway, but also, this coding bullshit iis a scam. What? You cant just connect a battery without coding it in using proprietary software? Thats the kind of shenanigans that makes me dislike newer cars sometimes.
3. More low-key/modest
To most people, owning an expensive car with a new reg plate is partly driven by the presteige that comes with ownership of a luxury marque. The newer and fancier the car, the greater the perceived success of the person. So what does driving a $500 jalopy say about you? In my opinion: who cares. Sure, driving a 24 year old handpainted nissan micra wont earn you much street cred. But running an older car can be done on a shoestring because you own it outright, leaving you with more actual disposable income to spend, as opposed to your neighbour with the brand new pcp financed car outside the door paying $500 per month while eating porridge 3 times a day.. Plus you have now saved a load of money which you can use to purchase a slightly more prestigious shitbox for your “weekend car”.
4. Less touchscreens
This is a big one. You cant operate a touchscreen without looking or at least glancing at it. Back in the old days all the buttons and switches were chunky, tactile, and in a set location so you could operate them by feel without taking your eyes off the road. It’s not just car dashboards… The advent of touchscreens killed off the popularity of physical buttons and switches in most devices. But its something that we should return to because it makes so much more sense.
5. Manual dipsticks and handbrakes
A dipstick is a thin metal rod that has a series of markings near the bottom so you can check the oil level manually. Simple eh? But about 15 years ago, car companies decided to delete this elegant solution and adopt a digital system with a sensor feeding data to the touchscreen in the cabin. Their idea was to take something extremely simple, and make it complicated for no reason at all. This is ok until your screens fails for some reason and now you cant check the oil manually! In fairness i know you could probably check it with the right OBD scanner, but the point is using a stick to check the depth of a body of fluid is almost foolproof, whereas this new digital oil level sensor system has so many more new potential failure points. This is a bad design philosophy.And removing handbrake levers… dont even get me started!
6. Better looking
I dont know if its just because of my age, but it seems to me that cars were just better looking (for the most part) 30/40 years ago. In my opinion some new car designs are so offensive to my eyes (new civic, new BMW with its giant kidney grilles). I cant help thinking cars are not only too complex these days, but they even LOOK too complex, awkward, lacking cohesiveness. Perhaps the problem is that most of the best shapes have already been used, and to realise a truly unique and innovate design is difficult, or almost impossible. Maybe thats why rich car enthusiasts seem to be drawn to older sportscars from boutique retromod companies such as singer automotive, and car companies seem to be making more retro-inspired designs.
7. Not stressing about dealer service history
Cars on the used market have always tended to have higher resale values when they have a full service history. But now more than ever the car companies/dealerships are trying to rip customers off with proprietary systems, CODING IN of components for no reason etc. Extortionate mark-up on otherwise inexpensive parts. Let some other sucker buy a brand new car and let him pay toyota prices or mercedes prices. When I swoop in to buy a car for $500 i dont care if the car has literally zero documentation of servicing and 200,00miles. Ill always go by the condition of the car. And then driving a $500 car means you do your own oil changes, fit tyres, brake pads, maybe the odd clutch or timing belt, and off you go… no eyewatering invoices from the local dealership to contend with.
8. Second hand parts
If disaster struck and lets say your gearbox failed on your 2023 bmw M4, youre basically financially screwed. How much is that gonna cost? $10,000? What happens if your gearbox fails on your 1994 corolla xli saloon with 374,000 miles? You go onto facebook marketplace and you buy one for $200. Change the gearbox that afternoon. Job done. The point is that 20 and 30 year old donor cars are plentiful in scrapyards, new cars are generally not.
9. Might appreciate in value
I mean this one is a bit of a longshot, but maybe the shitbox you decide to buy becomes a sought-after collectors car. Stranger things have happened. When you buy cars at rock bottom prices things can only go up. Nostalgia-based car purchases when a car reaches a certain age can affect values of shitboxes that have been kept in good condition. But seriously, theres still a lot of currently unloved 90’s cars out there that can be bought for cheap. As time goes on I think more and more of these cars will become more sought after for their nostalgia, looks, simplicity, reliability, fixability, and most importantly that famous 90s build quality.
10. Good for the environment
The government wants us all to drive new cars because they say new cars are better for the environment. But clearly keeping one car continually on the road for 30 years is better for the environment than producing 15 new cars, all purchased on PCP finance, building up a big debt bubble in the process. Add to that the government incentives to buy electric cars, with their even greater carbon footprint. If you care about mother nature you should drive something old, drive something interesting, and most of all, drive quirky.
11. Bonus reason
This is an extra bonus reason why older cars are better. Its also maybe the best in my opinion: You feel more free from stress when driving a $500 beater. Youre not worried that someone will bang off your door in the carpark for instance, because your car already has a nice “patina” and another couple of dings wont make the car look markedly different.And when you drive a $500 car, you drive it hard, and it feels like youre squeezing the last bit of value from that hidden gem as you scream up the road at 6000 rpm.