Hello Mustachians, I'm looking for some car advice. I am not a car guy, so please bear with me, and apologies for the long post.
My girlfriend and I are in our twenties. During the pandemic, she moved in with me here in Minneapolis from several states away. She drives a 2009 Camry hybrid with 202,000 miles. (It's not my car so I can't take credit for it in the "Brag about your high mileage car thread" :-p. I don't have a car of my own.) The car is borrowed from her dad, who bought it used with 70k miles on it several years ago. He took good care of it, and it is in good shape for the most part, the exception being the touch screen in the center dash which doesn't turn on anymore. Kelly Blue Book trade-in value is around $2500, private party value around $4500. The car is currently here with us in MN.
She's currently finishing her graduate degree and has a permanently remote job lined up for after she graduates this spring. Meanwhile I am planning to find a new job this summer or fall. I want to cast a wide geographic net with my job search, so we will probably be moving to another state (likely E or W coast) when I get a new job, but we don't know where yet! When she moved in with me we packed all her belongings into the Camry for the drive. Everything just barely fit, and I likely have about the same amount of stuff she does, so we could not repeat the performance.
In the past, GF hasn't been asked to pay anything for the car other than maintenance and gas (i.e. doesn't pay for insurance, did pay for new tires last year) but she would like to assert some independence by either returning the car to her dad or buying it from him. So the question is, should we buy it?
Reasons to have
a car:
- It is convenient
- We like hiking/camping which the car enables
- With the car we can do some slow travel cross-country to visit friends while still working remotely, which would be fun. Possibly we could do this during the spring/early summer before returning the car to her parents.
Notably, commuting is not a factor. Neither of us commute currently due to covid, and before covid I bike commuted. I'm hoping/prioritizing not to car commute at my yet-to-be found new job.
Reasons to buy
this car specifically:
- We trust the history of the car since her dad took good care of it
- Seems to be going strong at 200k mi (I don't know the repair history though)
- GF thinks her dad would sell it to her for the trade-in value. GF's parents are empty nesters and already have two cars, so they don't need the Camry back ASAP, and don't particularly miss it, though they do hint they would like it back at some point.
Reasons not to buy any car:
- We don't know where we'll be in the fall nor whether we will need/want a car there!
- Cars cost money
- Moving is hard, and the Camry doesn't seem well suited to it. It doesn't have a hitch and can't tow very much anyway. We could potentially get a hitch installed and tow a 4'x6' trailer. I don't know if that would contain our stuff nor how safe/affordable it would be.
My own thoughts are: Ideally we could wait till I found a new job, and then decide with more information, but regardless, I don't favor buying a car speculatively/"just in case". I am wary of buying this car just because it's already here; there could be another car that meets our needs better. I'm not convinced we want/need a car at all right now and nobody knows if we will want/need one by the fall.
My girlfriend is more undecided, and we would both like to hear your opinions!
TL;DR: We could get a well used '09 hybrid Camry for cheap, but we will soon be moving somewhere far away, don't know where. Buy the car?