How to buy Reliable car $3,000 or less

Although Japanese cars are more reliable, they also hold their value a lot more....you may want to check out some American cars too. GM makes(chevy/buick/pontiac/oldsmobile) with the 3800 V6 motor is a very reliable engine. And even though they're hard to find in that price, older Honda/Toyota/Nissans are great cars.

In that price range, I'd pick up a copy of "Want Ads," other auto classifieds magazines, check out different cars, and look in your local paper. Most dealers don't sell cars that cheap...well some do, depending on the area.

You shouldn't get taken advantage just because you're a girl, you'll get taken advantage of if you come across very uneducated on the subject, male or female.

Best way to overcome that, is make sure you find a mechanic that will do a pre-purchase inspection on the car. They usually charge $50-100 and will do a check on the car to see if there's any obvious problems. Do this before you pay for the car, and if the seller doesn't allow this, it's a red flag.

Also, you want to make sure the car has a clean title, which means it was never declared "totalled" by an insurance company, then fixed and put back on the road. Sometimes these cars can have previously damaged frames and/or electrical systems, and the car may never be "right" again.

As far as price/purchase price, you can check nada.com for retail values, even though they don't always reflect what real market value is. If you find a car you're interested, search cars.com, autotrader.com for the same model with similar miles to see how the car stacks up price-wise.

That's great advice. I'll search the classifieds and a website called Craigslist.com. Thanks.

I also suggest www.gocarbuying.com . You can look at used cars you like and it lists all of the reliability issues, price ranges for each year, and other useful information. Its like a consolidated synopsis of Consumer Reports.

Look at the Toyota Tercel. Darn near bulletproof and economical to boot. I might also look at an S-series truck. Although they don't score as high on the reliability scale, you can buy a four-cylinder model for next to nothing and have the utility of a truck. Repairs are cheap on them, too.

You CAN Buy A Car Under $3,000 !
You CAN Buy A Car Under $3K!
I know because I personally did this 3 months ago. No, I didn't have any help. Oh, I bought my car for only $1,000, not $3,000. (A 1997 sudan- 119,000 miles on it.) I did have to replace the spark plug wires and the clutch-$420. from a local repair shop. For a Grand Total $1,420.00 My car acts like it wants to race, but I not into racing.
It can be done, just do your homework.

A Mover-N-Shaker

If you live in an area that requires emissions testing, you will want something newer than a '96. Being ignorant, I bought a '94. After three months, come inspection time, I found it needed work. It had failed the parts per million part of the emissions test. Diagnostics have changed, and so has diagnostic equipment. Nobody kept up the old equipment, because it cost too much money. Bottom line, my regular mechanic refused to work on it, because, "I would just be guessing." I called around and found that most mechanics will tell you that they don't need no stinking diagnosis to fix a car. I finally selected one who asserted, "I can get it diagnosed and fix it." After paying him seven hundred dollars, the van sits in the driveway, with no inspection sticker. Sure, I went back and gave the mechanic a second shot at it, but he wanted me to pay him hundreds more to fix the front end (Which it dd not need), and then he would take it to an inspection site that would run the test on his own car, but put the illegally gotten sticker on my windshield.

Its not unrealistic. Theres cars out there. Im trying to do the same thing, to find a reliable car for 3 grand or less. Keep looking online for them and just talk to the owners about them. Have them send you more info and pictures of them, and before you send money to them or anything set up a time to actually go and look at it and test drive it.