Hi mustachians --
My wife and I own two cars: a '99 Honda Civic with about 130,000 miles and a '99 Honda Accord with 223,000 miles. We'd really like to get rid of the Accord, as it's a bit of a gas guzzler. It's a 6 cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. We're unfortunately not in a position to become a one-car family yet, so we've been thinking about getting a small, manual transmission, fuel-efficient hatchback.
Our friends just happen to be selling this 2007 Mazda s3 with 88k miles that's almost exactly what we're looking for:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/3845432411.htmlWe'd definitely feel better buying from friends than from strangers and would probably wind up with a slightly better deal that way, but it's just a little newer and lower mileage than we'd been thinking about.
We currently pay $410 per 6 months for almost minimum insurance coverage on the Accord and Civic. I would want to add collision and comprehensive coverage to this newer car, and we've got a quote for Civic/Mazda at $465 with the higher coverages. (We live in a high theft area.) My wife is currently putting at least 10k miles per year on the Accord. Resale value on the Accord is around $2500, maybe more if we're lucky. According to fueleconomy.gov, Mazda gets 22mpg city/30mpg highway versus 18 city/26 highway for the Accord.
One alternative is that my wife drives the Civic and I drive the Accord (which we're gonna start doing this week anyway). I only drive to work 2-3 days a week, about 8 miles each way. Figure 3,000 - 4,000 annual miles, if we're good about using the Civic whenever we can choose. Civic gets gas mileage comparable to the Mazda, and we could use it for wife's commute and most other driving. Then we only would drive the Accord until it dies, I guess... but that might not be too long from now.
What do you think, mustachians? To buy, or not to buy?