Help with gut feeling - second hand car purchase

[ellie]

HELP!!! I'm having a real dilemma with a car purchase and I thought who better to help me than the lovely bunch on SP.

Ok it probably not a big thing to a lot of people, but actually the process of knowing what's the right decision is just as important as any other decision and I would like to understand which feeling is the most real. I'm having one of those conflicts with my gut feeling, where my mind is tricking me, talking me around.

Ok so these are second hand cars.

1. is a toyota echo 2000 model with 140 km. It has a bit of rust on the drivers door and well the car wasn't as well kept as the other car. The place is a real car yard (other side of town/crappy area), meaning it's not like your top of the range car yard. The guys that serve you are a bit rough around the edges. The car has a safety rating of 3 out of 5 stars.

2. Mitsubishi Mirage 1999- has 85 km, was well kept by one owner, clean and paint job is in good condition. Nice drive, like the colour of the car, dark green. Dealer is down the rd from me (a respectable area), wasn't pushy at all. Has a safety rating of 1 out of 5.

Now I have a mechanic who has helped me through a lot of this, and has told me what to look for. He says both cars are good (without seeing them yet, so just model). He said the toyota echos are still are a better car and can last a long time without any trouble. He said the mirages are good too, but wont hold their value and just prepare to keep the car until you run it into ground (which is fine, not really expecting to resell).

I have to say I was about to walk out of the toyota car yard today, as I was about to get conned into signing something, so insisted that I could ring mechanic guy. He said he had dealings with this car yard once before and they mucked him around. The guys serving me were suprised and said look just take the car to your mechanic ( i put down $100 deposit, that's the norm) don't have to sign anything, get it checked over and see what he says. So I agreed to it.

So I will take to mechanic tomorrow morning (will have to pay him dosh) and he will tell me yay or nay.

But I keeping, hmmm somthings not right, but the thing is I really want an echo, because so many people have told me they are good reliable cars.

Echo's are hard to come by in my price range with decent km and I don't want to be looking around for cars for the next few weeks, it's just way too stressful for me. I just want to get this whole ordeal over and done with to be honest.

What would you do?

I have tried manifesting winning a few cars into the equation, but no go yet! I honestly thought I would get a call today saying, "I won a suburu" that I put entries into, but alas "no".

[ellie]

Gee thanks :P

So basically the world is telling me I have to figure this out on my own, ha?

[Jim11]

If you trust the mechanic and he says it's good then go for the echo if that's what you want.

A lot of dealers are sketchy and try and get you into horrible financing deals and/or throw on a bunch of extra charges like "admin & registration fees".

If you're not getting financing with the dealer then just make sure they give you the TOTAL FINAL price, or they may try and throw on additional registration type fees. If you're getting financing then you have to pay very close attention to what you're getting into.