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Thread: How I bought the cheapest car in Albuquerque

  1. #1
    Junior Member Suzandy's Avatar
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    How I bought the cheapest car in Albuquerque

    Greetings, everybody.

    Long story, but it goes somewhere. Important bit of context is that I'm one of those people who has to optimize everything.

    I had always wanted to live in a cottage in the mountains, so about a year and a half ago, I bought one. I have a very pleasant commute down historic Route 66 in New Mexico, before only the last couple of miles turn to ok-to-absolutely-horrible city congestion in Albuquerque, depending on the time of day. Not bad at all, as drives to work go. The tradeoff is I drive between 300 and 400 miles a week, more if I drive to see family, go camping, etc. My only vehicle until a couple of months ago was my 2015 Chevrolet Silverado crew cab, which by no means gets bad fuel economy, but I was unhappy with how fast I was wearing out my beautiful (and expensive) truck for no other reason than to carry me, my laptop and my fancy purse from my front door to my office. After I spent $580 on the first major service interval, the one when it's time to change All The Fluids, I decided to get serious about buying a cheap, reliable, used subcompact.

    My search parameters were: it had to be an extremely cheap car. Like really really cheap. The cheapest car possible once all factors were added up - not using a lot of fuel, not breaking in expensive ways, not costing $580 dollars in a single regular maintenance event, and not having a big price tag. Being an optimizer, I carry a lot of insurance and am happy to pay for it, so I excluded insurance cost from my criteria. I had this fantasy that maybe, just maybe, I would find a car with a manual transmission, because I love driving more than almost anything, but knew that was very unlikely given everything else I was looking for.

    My Chevy dealer, for whatever reason, had taken on trade a 2014 Mirage with a CVT and 73,000 miles on the odometer. After reading the many, many reviews by happy owners and the many hilariously clueless reviews by auto journalists, I had to try it. I walked up to the car about 95% sure I was wasting my lunch hour: it was weird-looking, tiny, overpriced, and blue. I have a thing against blue cars. On the test drive, it was still weird-looking, still tiny, painfully slow, and astonishingly good to drive.

    Here's where I should also explain how important cars, and driving, are to me. I spend a couple of hours a day behind the wheel. I'm originally from rural New Mexico, and it was normal to have to drive 2 hours to buy basic necessities when I was growing up. My father made me learn to drive in an 1954 US Air Force crash truck, with no gear synchronizers and no power anything, and then operate his construction company's heavy equipment, before I was allowed to drive a passenger car. Dinner conversation was car talk, and serious mechanical stuff like compression ratios, no amateur BS topics allowed. Almost every male forebear I have was a CDL driver at some point in his working life, if not his entire career, and many of my relatives on my mom's side worked in the various Michigan automotive plants. I bought myself a 1970 Dodge Dart when I was 20 years old and barely made enough money to buy food. I married my dreadful ex-husband solely because he was the first man I'd met who wasn't related to me and could properly operate a clutch. After him, the next awful man I got engaged to was a brilliant hot rod builder. I still have pictures of that guy's cars.

    I really, obsessively, unhealthily love cars.

    I fell completely in love with that stupid used blue Mirage. It was almost like driving the little economy cars of the 80's and 90's again, before drive-by-wire and accessories no one wants ruined everything. I had never driven a CVT before. It was cool. You people who own them know exactly what I mean. I haggled on the price until the dealer came down to Earth, and they said they'd have it ready for me the next morning.

    I took possession of the car the next day. Something just didn't feel right as I drove away, not a specific performance issue I could identify; I was just suddenly feeling awful about buying this car that I had loved so much the day before. About 5 miles from the dealership, an ungodly howling noise I've never heard before and hope to never hear again began coming from somewhere down low, in front of the gear selector. My bad feeling got worse. Put the gear selector in neutral and coasted in traffic. The howling dwindled into silence. Dropped the selector back into drive. Sound rose again to a demonic howl. Neutral... quiet. Drive... give it a few seconds... howl. Fantastic.

    In New Mexico, we have a 15-day used car lemon law. In situations like this, the dealer is required to repair the car, put you in a different car or refund your money altogether. Given that it was closing time on Friday and I had a 30ish-mile drive home, I had the dealer put me in a loaner so I could "figure out what I wanted to do and we would work it out Monday."

    I drove the loaner down the street to the Mitsubishi dealership, which stays open late, and asked to drive the cheapest brand new Mirage they had. The guy pleasantly asked me if, by any chance, I could drive a stick.

    The 2019, besides being 4 horsepower better than the 2015, had the stock touchscreen radio. And a manual transmission. And a 100,000 mile warranty. And it wasn't blue. The salesman and I made friends. He was an old CDL driver and I don't think he'd ever met someone who really loved cars and yet still wanted to buy a base model Mirage.

    Things got weird when I started trying to negotiate price. They were asking an okay price, but come on, you never pay the asking price. My new friend got cagey. He stood up and got the sales manager, who came out carrying a big stack of papers. The sales manager flatly informed me that they could not negotiate the price down any lower on this particular car, because it had been stolen off their lot, gone on a 6-week adventure, been located by Albuquerque Police Department, been cosmetically and mechanically reconditioned, and now they were selling it to me for substantially below their invoice cost. The pile of papers was the documentation trail on the Mirage's journey through near-death. Nearly every body panel, all the lenses, and most of the glass on the car had been bashed in. I still don't understand why they didn't total the car.

    Well, that explained why there were already 2,100 miles on the odometer.

    In case you somehow haven't heard, Albuquerque has been the worst city in the USA for auto thefts for quite some time now. Our property crime overall is appalling, our violent crime isn't too great, but the auto theft was so bad for a while that they were literally stealing new cars from dealerships. This has a lot to do with why I decided to buy a mountain cottage far, far away from my office instead of a pleasant little house in a tidy-looking subdivision across the street from my office.

    So naturally, now I really had to have this car. I fully understood the risk, or rather the likelihood, that this car was going to have premature problems. But it had a story. It had been stolen by Albuquerque car thieves who tried to kill it, but it had survived. And at asking price, it was still the cheapest new car in town.

    I told them I wasn't too sure about the clutch, with that kind of history. They countered that I was still buying a 100,000 mile warranty.

    At 2,900 miles, they had to replace the clutch. I told them so. Broken glass still comes out of somewhere I can't see and gathers around the gear shift. I also had an argument with my friend the salesman, about how I thought the EPA fuel economy estimates are dumb and I could beat them. He said the EPA estimate is a little high, but he agreed I could get about 45 mpg. I told him I would beat 60 mpg on my regular commute. He bet me that I couldn't get over 52.

    He still owes me coffee.


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  2. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to Suzandy For This Useful Post:

    Adam - UK (08-03-2019),Cobrajet (08-03-2019),daleWV (08-03-2019),Fummins (08-06-2019),Marklovski (08-03-2019),MetroMPG (08-03-2019)

  3. #2
    Senior Member Cobrajet's Avatar
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    Welcome aboard, and I loved your story! Your car needs a name...one befitting it's odd-for-a-new-car journey to your ownership. How about "The Statistic"?

    You will LOVE your Mirage. All owners do, all professional reviewers don't. Other than routine maintenance, all mine has needed over 124,000 miles is a clutch cable.

    But you can't keep that secret from us...how much was "the cheapest car in Albuquerque"?

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    Moderator Eggman's Avatar
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    Hello Suzandy and welcome to the forum. Thanks for that great first post and accompanying pictures. Here's to many good miles of reliable, affordable transportation.

    Oh, and be careful - this forum and car can be quite addictive. Though I get the feeling you fit right in.

    Looking forward to more posts.

        __________________________________________

        click to view fuel log View my fuel log 2015 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 49.6 mpg (US) ... 21.1 km/L ... 4.7 L/100 km ... 59.5 mpg (Imp)


  5. #4
    Junior Member Suzandy's Avatar
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    Heya guys. I paid $12,000 plus tax, title and license.

    This might not sound special depending on where you are, but car prices in Abq are absolutely stupid. This is mainly because it doesn't occur to people here to like, shop around and check Kelly Blue Book before they buy something. For those of us who do basic pre-purchase homework, it's a normal thing to make a quick trip to Phoenix and buy the exact same car for way less money - on a nice mid-range car like a Subaru or loaded Focus ST, I've seen friends save anywhere from $6k to $12k. That same night I found the same white Mirage, but not pre-stolen, on a Phoenix dealer's website for $11,000. The quick trip to go get it, assuming the Phoenix dealer was honest, would have cost around $500 and wasn't feasible at the time anyway. I counted myself blessed to finally reach a point in life where I could pay $500 to save my time and effort, and took my stolen car.

    So far my son and I just call it The Tiny Car or Tiny White Car.

    Funnily enough, I tried writing auto reviews for a while. Not enough pay or substance, wayyyyyy too much BS. Except for those guys at Jalopnik and a few other sites, who are awesome. Subsequently I've stuck with technical writing.

    Interesting that you mention the clutch cable, Cobrajet. After the clutch replacement I continued to have pretty serious problems with shifting, in particular that when parking, the car sometimes would not shift out of neutral into either second or reverse. Maybe one parking spot in five. No amount of fancy clutch work would make it go into gear. (How I learned to drive with no synchros?... If I can't make a transmission go into gear, it's bloody well not going into gear.) I'd have to turn the engine off, select the gear and restart the car, and then get my car out of the way of traffic. Safe and completely reasonable for a new car, right? I may have screamed at the service department and escalated to the manager of the dealership group. The best they could do was adjust the clutch cable, which helped. But the shift quality is still kinda crappy, which I see some other owners have complained about, and I've still had to shut the engine off to get the car into 1st or reverse twice since the last "repair." The service manager is a good guy and admitted to me his team doesn't get a lot of experience with any Mirage problems, since they rarely occur. Fair, but how often is a manual transmission Mirage stolen by Albuquerque meth heads? We all know we're dealing with a fringe case here, wish I could get it fully dealt with since it's an issue that may make me hesitate to turn the car over to my son when he begins driving in 3 years.

  6. #5
    Senior Member Cobrajet's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Suzandy View Post
    Heya guys. I paid $12,000 plus tax, title and license.

    This might not sound special depending on where you are, but car prices in Abq are absolutely stupid. This is mainly because it doesn't occur to people here to like, shop around and check Kelly Blue Book before they buy something. For those of us who do basic pre-purchase homework, it's a normal thing to make a quick trip to Phoenix and buy the exact same car for way less money - on a nice mid-range car like a Subaru or loaded Focus ST, I've seen friends save anywhere from $6k to $12k. That same night I found the same white Mirage, but not pre-stolen, on a Phoenix dealer's website for $11,000. The quick trip to go get it, assuming the Phoenix dealer was honest, would have cost around $500 and wasn't feasible at the time anyway. I counted myself blessed to finally reach a point in life where I could pay $500 to save my time and effort, and took my stolen car.

    So far my son and I just call it The Tiny Car or Tiny White Car.

    Funnily enough, I tried writing auto reviews for a while. Not enough pay or substance, wayyyyyy too much BS. Except for those guys at Jalopnik and a few other sites, who are awesome. Subsequently I've stuck with technical writing.

    Interesting that you mention the clutch cable, Cobrajet. After the clutch replacement I continued to have pretty serious problems with shifting, in particular that when parking, the car sometimes would not shift out of neutral into either second or reverse. Maybe one parking spot in five. No amount of fancy clutch work would make it go into gear. (How I learned to drive with no synchros?... If I can't make a transmission go into gear, it's bloody well not going into gear.) I'd have to turn the engine off, select the gear and restart the car, and then get my car out of the way of traffic. Safe and completely reasonable for a new car, right? I may have screamed at the service department and escalated to the manager of the dealership group. The best they could do was adjust the clutch cable, which helped. But the shift quality is still kinda crappy, which I see some other owners have complained about, and I've still had to shut the engine off to get the car into 1st or reverse twice since the last "repair." The service manager is a good guy and admitted to me his team doesn't get a lot of experience with any Mirage problems, since they rarely occur. Fair, but how often is a manual transmission Mirage stolen by Albuquerque meth heads? We all know we're dealing with a fringe case here, wish I could get it fully dealt with since it's an issue that may make me hesitate to turn the car over to my son when he begins driving in 3 years.
    Many years ago I had a 300ZX Turbo with a notchy shifter. What I learned to do was go into second and then first, or second and then reverse. Worked every time...and I still do it on every manual car I have owned since!

  7. #6
    Junior Member Suzandy's Avatar
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    Right?? I'm way too excited to be on a forum where drivers even know about that.

    Notchy is definitely the word for the typical Mirage. Annoying, but since I'm too cheap to buy a Porsche, my feelings are my problem.

    The inconsistency is what's so perplexing. Nothing that would normally work on a tricky transmission works on this thing. It goes right into gear until suddenly it doesn't. At that point it will respond to nothing that ever worked on anything I've driven: my worn-out 1980 Mazda GLC, various 1980's Ford Escorts, 1983 Suburban with a sketchy transplanted 4-speed, the antique USAF vehicle, the Porsche 951, etc. You can try a quick 2-1st or 2nd-R shift, lightly rev the engine, slip the clutch, double-clutch, triple-clutch, pray, allow the car to roll a little if you're on an incline, or any combination of those. The transmission resists, grinds, but will not go into 1 or R unless you turn the engine off. (I have not brought myself to try brute force shoving the shifter into gear. It would be like kicking a puppy.) It's almost exactly like when an electronic reverse lockout misbehaves, except 1st is locked out too.

    The dealership techs documented that they inspected the linkage and found no damage was done by the driver who completely destroyed the clutch in under 3,000 miles.

    In all my internet travels, I've found one person on a Lancer/Evo forum who describes having the same problem but not to this degree.

    This does not stop me from loving the car. Seeing the used cars that are available for $12k is a powerful motivator for me to deal with it until the solution appears.

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    Well I can already tell you are gonna be my new favorite member on this board... I could read a book you wrote about buying that car.
    Resident Tire Engineer

        __________________________________________

        click to view fuel log View my fuel log 2014 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 44.4 mpg (US) ... 18.9 km/L ... 5.3 L/100 km ... 53.3 mpg (Imp)


  9. #8
    Quite the intro thread... Welcome to the forum!

    I suspected you were a writer before you said so. Very nice.

    Oh, and congrats on the car.

        __________________________________________

        click to view fuel log View my fuel log 2014 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 63.2 mpg (US) ... 26.9 km/L ... 3.7 L/100 km ... 75.9 mpg (Imp)


  10. #9
    Senior Member Top_Fuel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Suzandy View Post
    ...will not go into 1 or R unless you turn the engine off.
    Going into first for me is rarely a problem. I usually push in the clutch and count to 5 before I shift to first (when I'm sitting still). I almost never downshift my car so I can't comment on downshifting.

    My car can be challenging to put in reverse even when the engine is off. In that case, I do what Cobrajet suggested. Heck...sometimes I have to run it through all 4 gears and then into reverse.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cobrajet View Post
    ...go into second and then first, or second and then reverse.

        __________________________________________

        click to view fuel log View my fuel log 2015 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 52.2 mpg (US) ... 22.2 km/L ... 4.5 L/100 km ... 62.6 mpg (Imp)


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    Senior Member AtomicPunk's Avatar
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    So can we add that 2014 she had with 73,000 miles to the bad CVT pile?



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