How much for Grandson's car?

If mileage under 100,000 is important, it will be hard to find anything in that price range. 

I was thinking $5,000 would be enough to get an older car that is safe and dependable. I also wanted to say that your DGS is very lucky to have such a thoughtful and generous grandmother!

   That is very kind of you.    We recently did some car shopping ourselves and hit sticker shock!  Unfortunately I think it's going to be difficult to find something in that price range.. If you are lucky enough to find something under $10K that is lower in miles and reliable, remember to have a mechanic look at it if it's a For Sale by Owner, so you are not stuck with something that needs a lot of work, also.  
Best of luck.  

I have purchased 5 used cars in the past year. Yes, we had a run of bad car luck. Each of the cars I purchased were about $10K. They are American made cars and each had between 30K and 50K miles. You might be able to get a really small car for under $10K but it won't really be a safe ride if he's in wreck. I bought the next size up from compact - almost to mid size. Some of them are Ford Focus, Chevy Cobalt, Dodge Avenger, Ford Taurus, Nissan Versa.

I know people who buy like Hondas for $5K that have more than 150K miles and I would not do that.

I bought each of my sons a 2 year old car when they started driving and those cars took them to college.

A few years ago, about 5, my son bought his first car. A Chrysler Sebring for 1500.00. The car lasted him through high school, and part way into college. Unfortunately, it need a lot of work after the 3rd year. He put the money into it, and it ran great for a year, and then it just died. It needed a whole new computer, the mechanic thought. In order to find out what was wrong, we had to get a new computer for the car, and then there might be more. We ended up having to junk the car, and he now has my old car. I think, from a private party, you can find a decent car for the 3,000 - 4,000. Our neighbors kids have a nice "grandma" type car, that they paid 4,000 for. Good luck, and thank you for helping out your grandson.

For a teenager who just needs a little run around vehicle, that should be fine if you aren't super picky. Choose something that is traditionally reliable. It only needs to last him a few years. You aren't buying a car for the rest of his life or even ten years. If he gets five years out of it he's doing great. Besides some of those 90s compacts get crazy good gas mileage. My husband's Nissan gets 40mpg on the highway.


My dd just bought a '90 Geo Prism. It has a crap ton of miles on it and she had to put some money into it but she's still spent under $1000 on it total. It will be fine for running around in and Prisms are very reliable (which is crazy because the other Geos weren't.)

When our kids turn 16 we give them $5,000 to buy a car. They are welcome to add to it and get something nicer if they'd like. We haven't had a hard time finding ok cars in that price range but would never look at a dealership. Dealers aren't going to have something that inexpensive in our experience. We bought from local sellers we found on cars.com, autotrader.com or the like. DH is pretty handy with cars so he could weed out the obvious bad choices then we took them to our mechanic for a look over. We've purchased a VW Beetle, Jetta and a Jeep Wrangler. The VWs have both made it through high school and college for our DDs and they are both in the market to start looking for something newer.

It was important to my DH to teach them about shopping for a car, learning about value and where to take a risk and where not to, looking beyond the rims...lol. A family member also gave each of my DDs $500 which helped with small repairs to get them started (new tires for one and I can't remember the other).

My first car was purchased at an auction for $3000. It can be done, but it won't last a long time. I got about 3-4 years out of mine, but not without some costly repairs. 

Low mileage cars depend also if you live in a small town. Around where I live. (Atlanta ) low mileage cars would be a premium price., well over $5K.

I think $3,000 to $4,000 does sound reasonable. You'll definitely have to look around some and you can't be in a big hurry. I probably wouldn't buy it off a lot. I would start asking around to friends and family in the area and see if anyone is selling a car. That's how my oldest bought his first vehicle about three or four years ago. It was a 1986 Chevy Blazer I think and he paid about $1000 for it. That vehicle has been across the country at least four times. Now my middle son drives it after oldest went into the Navy. He loves it. It definitely has over 100,000 miles on it, but well-made vehicles can easily go well over that. It's not perfect to look at it but it's not horrible. My son in the Navy is actually very sad that he sold it to us for middle son because he misses it dearly. He's looking to buy something else under $5,000 and we're helping him with that. In fact, my dh knows someone at work who has a Hyundai Accent for sale for $2,100. It looks very clean and has about 60,000 miles on it. We don't know the year yet, but dh is going to look at it and ds might buy it if dh gives the thumb's up. In fact, I was getting ready to start a thread asking about Hyundai Accents--if anyone's had any experience with them. I'd like to find the year out first though.

Agree with the others though--you ARE a generous grandma!

My parents gave my son his car when he was in high school. It was my mom's that she hardly drove. It's a Nissan Maxima and had about 60K miles on it at that time. Although we have had to put some $ into the maintenance and some repairs of it, it's still running ::knocking on wood:: and we are hoping it last through the next few years while he lives at school. He has put 20K miles on it since he got it 3 years ago. It was the nicest thing ever that they did and again, your DGS is very fortunate.

DH bought a Grand Cherokee jeep about 3 yrs ago. We paid less than $2k for it. It's a 1996 and has about 130k miles on it now. Mechanically the only thing we've done *knock on wood* is tires, brakes and recently a new radiator. DS inherited it when he got his license this year.

Good deals are out there. Just because a car has over 100k miles on it doesn't mean it's not a safe, reliable car. I'd say you could get a pretty decent car for $3-4k through a private seller.

I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on a car that's bound to get beat up or statistically my child could wreck. I've heard that cars in college parking lots tend to get beaten up, people putting dings in them, generally not caring about others property. They can have a nice car when they pay for it.