Buffalo Boy's Blog

For those of you thinking about buying a new car to save on gas, expensives or other economic reasons in the coming months, let me tell you about my Toyota.

My car just hit 120,000 miles the other day and its purring. The other day I had to get an oxygen sensor replaced that cost me $330 but when you think about the fact that I haven't made a car payment in 15 months, a repair like that every 6-12 months doesn't really bother me.

True things will fail on my car over the coming months and years, but overall it has lasted 7 years and will most likely get me 10-12 years with constant oil changes and a little TLC. Im holding my breath on the transmission, but even so, $1000 for a new transmission will pay for itself in 5 months without a car payment. Especially given the fact that with a new transmission, I might get another 8 years out of it. The alternator goes, its $400-500, big deal, in two months its paid for and Im making money based on the fact that I don't have a car payment.

It still gets me 29-31 miles per gallon, sometimes more on the highway for longer trips. True gas prices have been declining but lets face it, we are not going to see $50 oil again anytime soon and we probably won't see gas go below $3 a gallon again either.

If I have to I can trade it in for minimal return and get into something new that I will have money saved for. I am going to start saving after this Chirstmas season $100 every two weeks for a down payment on something new and within 2 years I will walk into a Toyota dealer and pick out my next car with a $4000-5000 down payment in cash.

Its the second Toyota I have owned and the first a 1991 Toyota Tercel, lasted 8 years and 120,000 miles and like this one was purring when I turned over the keys.

So the moral of my story, go Toyota for economy and reliability. I am getting paid absolutely no money for writing this either in case you were wondering. You can't beat the quality and reliability of a Toyota. Most don't stick with their cars long enough to realize life without a car payment. Life after car payments sure is sweet.