1995 Toyota Camry

This review makes it sound pretty good:

http://www.internetautoguide.com/reviews/45-int/sport-utility-vehicles/toyota/camry/1995/index.html

That seems like a lot of money for an almost 12 year old car. I recently traded in my 1996 Honda Accord and only got $2600 for it. Granted on a trade you can't expect retail, but the dealership was going to price it in the $5K range. Probably get $4,900 or something.

Camry's are great cars, though. My son baught a 1992 Camry from a friend for $500 three or four years ago. He hasn't put any significant money into it yet.

I did a superficial Google for Blue Book Values:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Blue+Book+Value++1995+Toyota+Camry

and found a range from $5225 to $5800.

Thanks for that lead, Noddy. It's an LE (sedan, I think), which seems to narrow it down to the $5,850 - $6,500 range.

http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/trims.aspx?year=1995&make=Toyota&model=Camry

It has a fair amount of "extras" and is in really good shape. So that makes me feel a bit better about the price.

Also that's just the sticker price, I'm assuming there's wiggle room.

You could always settle for a $700 bicycle.

Camrys are excellent and reliable cars. Fantastic family cars, and they last for an eternity if kept up. My dad has bought three that I know of. The only one that ever had problems was in an accident where it sat in a ditch full of water overnight. It still ran, just not as well as before.

Of course, have a mechanic look at it first, but if that checks out I say go for it.

Also try to find out the history on the car. Get the VIN and check HERE. Many flood damaged cars from New Orleans and other Gulf coast areas are "flooding" the market right now.

absolutly.
but you have to wonder how well the car was kept by its previous owner.

If they treated it like crap, then it will be crap now.

My suggestion, would be to take it to get a diagnostics before you offer a penny on it.

You could be spending 5,000$ , to have to spend 5000$ again later to keep it running.

Fer sure on the mechanic thing. We have a friend who is a mechanic who will be looking things over.

E.G. speaks:

Hi, and thanks very much for your help and advice. Some additional relevant information:

1. Right, first I'll pay for a full mechanic's inspection from our friend's shop. They've done a lot of work for us, and we've been very happy with them.

2. The dealer used to run his own mechanic's shop at the same location, and now he just fixes up cars that he buys at auction and then sells them. This is a long-time neighborhood business that depends on word-of-mouth.

3. Some of the work he did: complete tuneup, new timing belt, new belts and hoses, replaced fluids, new battery, new brakes, and general cleanup. He notes that the 90k service was completed, and that the tires are newer (they are).

4. Apparently the car was involved in two collisions (1996 and 1999), and continued to be a lease vehicle for several years after that. In total, it seems to have had a few drivers. The only thing I saw, which the dealer pointed out, was that the right front quarter panel had obviously been replaced (no original VIN tag, unlike the other doors, panels, and hood). The area around there looks fine, including the welds inside the engine compartment, and how parallel the gap is between the quarter panel and the hood.

5. There was a little bit of vibration in the brakes in slowing down from highway speed. The dealer said that this might be due to the recent brake job, and might go away. The other thing is that I thought I heard the slight est pop/ping/thunk a few times when the automatic transmission was shifting. I am not at all certain about this, and the dealer had no explanation, and hadn't noticed anything. Obviously, I'll have my mechanic check both points carefully.

Thanks again for your help. Right now I'm driving a car that I bought for a dollar and a bag of good coffee -- and I might have gotten ripped off. It would be nice to have a car that wasn't a complete POS.

E.G.:
Right, good idea. The dealer had the report (not CarFax, but something similar) available, and I will check it independently. The vehicle has been in Ohio its whole life.

----

Me again:

YES, he has his own account, he just has some complex about using it.

Could also be bad alignment , or .. hopefully something as simple as unbalanced tires.

hopefully those 2 points will be covered in the break job?

I think both items are red flags. They have had bad experiences with car mechanics there. Proceed with caution, Will Robinson! My niece and her family live in Columbus.

I had a little shimmy thing going on with my car when I braked after highway speed recently and it wasn't alignment - turned out to be that I needed new brake roters in front. Not horribly expensive.

I don't know what happened to the last part of the last sentence in my post. What I tried to say was that my niece and her family have had problems with mechanics in Columbus. Not that it means you will, but just a word of caution, again. I seem to be a real Debbie Downer. I'm sorry. I'll stop.

No no you're being realistic.

I don't like the two accidents part either, I found that out after I posted the initial part.

We are lucky in that we trust our friend, who is our friend first and then also happens to be a mechanic. He'll do a thorough inspection and let us know if anything is off. (This is a different guy than the one who's selling, just to clarify.)

I'm for looking around more myself, I think E.G. kinda wants to just buy the thing and be done with it.

Having a trustworthy mechanic is a huge part of the picture though, so glad for that anyway.

I forgot to comment on this FreeDuck sighting -- SO great to have you back, if even very briefly! Hope to see a lot more of you...

Thanks, soz.

The two accident thing might not be a big deal. Can you tell if the airbags deployed? If not, they were probably not major accidents and probably resulted in only body damage.

But I say keep looking anyway. Camry's are abundant. When I bought my new car this spring (a Scion Xb, I love it)! they were really marking down the new Camrys like crazy. Maybe the demand has gone down for them now that we have so many choices in the passenger car market. Is a new car or a certified pre-owned car just not in the cards yet?

Ain't in the cards yet, no. It's a shame, too, because it really seems to be a buyer's market when it comes to new cars. I'm hoping it'll trickle down to used ones. Evidently this car was originally priced at $6,500.

E.G.'s getting cold feet, we're finally starting to regain financial equilibrium and he doesn't want to spend a big chunk of money, he wants to get AHEAD. His car is pretty much done for though. Just a matter of whether he can stand to take the bus, I guess.

I'm trying to convince him that if he puts say $2,000 down, the payments on an ~$6,000 car just aren't going to make that huge of a dent in our finances.