>Bringing up owning a junk car is not relevant if there aren’t enough to make that feasible.
All cars go through that phase eventually. It's a simple problem of economic friction. If more people who could afford much nicer drove those kinds of cars more of those cars would be on the market because there would be demand and people would sell stuff private party rather than taking stupidly low trade in values.
> Junk cars do cost more to maintain
More than a car under warranty, sure. If you don't maintain them to "subdivision of McMansions in a good school district" standards they are quite cheap. <Insert pearl clutching and low effort comment about road safety here.>
If you wanna drive junk you have to go all in and really play the part. Driving junk and trying to maintain it like it's not junk is a fools errand. I don't really want to go into specific examples because people will just hand wave it all away as anecdotes but basically if you buy any old running and driving shitbox for $1k, keep all the fluids topped up and changed on some semblance of a schedule and only fix the things that will imminently (like next week) keep the vehicle from operating you'll probably be out no more than the purchase price in a given year. That leaves a hell of a lot of money to buy gas before you even get close to your $5k average number.
To put real numbers to things, a 90s/00s economy car that runs some sort of 14" tire will cost you under $300 to put new tires on. A transmission replacement (which you probably wouldn't do, you'd just get another shitbox) using a medium-low mile junkyard transmission (say $250 used) will likely be under a grand after shop labor (unless you live in a HCOL urban area). A lot of crap has to break to get you to your $1k/yr cost.
Plus, if you can do the work yourself it often becomes more than worth it. A mechanic's time is expensive—yours probably is not. If you have alternative transport to get to work or fetch parts and can work on it in the evenings, stuff can be done very cheaply.
For example, paying a mechanic to repair an air conditioner (replace compressor, condenser, drier, and associated parts, with a flush out and refrigerant recharge) is prohibitively expensive. I was quoted $2000 plus labour to do this work last month by a reputable mechanic. I did it myself for about $600 with parts from rockauto.com and very basic tools (socket set).
All cars go through that phase eventually. It's a simple problem of economic friction. If more people who could afford much nicer drove those kinds of cars more of those cars would be on the market because there would be demand and people would sell stuff private party rather than taking stupidly low trade in values.
> Junk cars do cost more to maintain
More than a car under warranty, sure. If you don't maintain them to "subdivision of McMansions in a good school district" standards they are quite cheap. <Insert pearl clutching and low effort comment about road safety here.>
If you wanna drive junk you have to go all in and really play the part. Driving junk and trying to maintain it like it's not junk is a fools errand. I don't really want to go into specific examples because people will just hand wave it all away as anecdotes but basically if you buy any old running and driving shitbox for $1k, keep all the fluids topped up and changed on some semblance of a schedule and only fix the things that will imminently (like next week) keep the vehicle from operating you'll probably be out no more than the purchase price in a given year. That leaves a hell of a lot of money to buy gas before you even get close to your $5k average number.
To put real numbers to things, a 90s/00s economy car that runs some sort of 14" tire will cost you under $300 to put new tires on. A transmission replacement (which you probably wouldn't do, you'd just get another shitbox) using a medium-low mile junkyard transmission (say $250 used) will likely be under a grand after shop labor (unless you live in a HCOL urban area). A lot of crap has to break to get you to your $1k/yr cost.