My wife inherited a 2007 Buick with 50k miles on it. It gets an abysmal 19 mpg. We're thinking we should sell it for something more efficient, but I think I need some validation. My friends and family are singing the "why would you sell it for something junkier?!" song and it's getting in my head. I don't care about the fancy factor, but I've never sold or bought a car privately before, so it's a little too easy to convince myself that it's not worth the trouble.
Note: We can't cut the car out yet. We want to, we absolutely will cut a car out the moment it's feasible, but we can't right now.
Wife drives about 6,000 miles/year at minimum. At 19 mpg that's 315 gallons of gas. If we get her into something that can do 30 mpg, that drops to 200 gallons. At $3.00/gal, that's a savings of $345/year--and that's the minimum!
The big financial sticking point is the reliability ratings: This model has a catastrophic meltdown at 100-150k miles. We're years away from that, but it seems downright ridiculous to knowingly incur those repair costs when we could swap this thing for something that 1) won't give us that kind of trouble 2) costs less in gas and 3) actually fits our needs. We live in the city and camp on a regular basis--Buicks are terrible for both of those things.
I suspect we can get about $8-9k for this thing. That's plenty to cover a nice little fuel efficient hatchback, and we might even come out ahead.
This is a total no brainer, right? It's worth the hassle to save $350/year + untold maintenance costs down the line?