Used cars are great because you can get more vehicles for your money. But the reason you didn’t just keep your old car is that it was clunky, underpowered, and just out-of-date. What you want is a car that’s so new and exciting that you never noticed how much it cost at all. You don’t want to buy a Ford when you could have a Porsche, but if it’s going to take you several years of hard work to pay off your student loans, or save up the deposit on that apartment, or whatever it is that’ll make it affordable for you to move on in life, then why not settle for an old Ford.
Test drive the car yourself
If you want to buy a used car in San Diego, find one bought locally and has had only one previous owner. If you can’t find one, your next best bet is a car bought by someone who lives in the same climate as you. This isn’t as hard a constraint as it might sound. In San Francisco, for example, all cars work equally well for nine of the twelve months of the year. The other three months are foggy, but at least cars don’t rust. For this reason, it would be much easier to buy used vehicles in San Diego. People from California tend to sell their cars when they move east, and vice versa.
When buying a used car, the most important thing is checking the vehicle’s history. You need to know how many previous owners the car has had and whether it has been in any accidents or not. You can usually get this information from the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), which is found on the dashboard near the steering wheel and all car legal documents.
You also need to consider what kind of mileage you want. Some people prefer low mileage vehicles because they tend to be newer and have more up-to-date safety features. Others don’t mind high mileage vehicles because they are generally less expensive. Either way, make sure that your budget fits with what you’re looking for in a car.
In any case, when buying used cars in San Diego, you should be wary of any car that wasn’t bought locally or hasn’t had only one previous owner. Cars are very complicated machines with all sorts of subsystems whose failure modes can interact in complex ways.
