First of all, you should make sure you've got your diagnosis correct: a clutch wears out pretty gradually: it slips more and more until it becomes hard to get the car moving (it revs as if it were in neutral, even in gear). If your problem has more sudden symptoms, it's likely some other problem (e.g. the clutch hydraulic system sprung a leak, the clutch disk shattered and jammed in the bellhousing so you suddenly can't shift gears at all, etc.). If the problem is indeed with the hydraulics or the linkage or something like that, it's possible it could be fixed a lot less expensively than a transmission swap or clutch replacement would cost.
Second, a clutch is an item designed to wear, like brakes and tires. It's just a relatively expensive, one, on a relatively long replacement cycle. IMO, normal maintenance is hardly ever a good reason to get rid of a car -- you should simply have been budgeting for it all along.
That said, unless you've put a
lot of miles on it (and not freeway miles, either -- city miles, involving starting and stopping), like to drag race and dump the clutch, or just suck at driving, I wouldn't expect the clutch on a 5-year-old car to be anywhere close to worn out yet. (Speaking of which.... do you still have a warranty?)
Third, a clutch replacement on a Focus should probably cost $1000 or less (as long as you know better than to take it to the dealer, who would inevitably gouge you for some ridiculously high price). My wild guess on manual transmission replacement would be $2000 or less. Either way, IMO not an amount large enough to justify getting rid of the car over.
I need a car for work by tomorrow. .. im sure ill lose a couple thousand and add more debt into my life if I trade it in.
This is an example of how structuring your lifestyle to be resilient to shocks can save you money (and conversely, how failing to do so can cost you money).
For example, I wouldn't have this particular problem because I ride a bike to work. If my bike broke I could fix it. If I couldn't fix it, I could ride one of my several other bikes. If that weren't an option I could drive to work (in either of two cars, neither of which are "normally" required for commuting). And if all
that failed, I could take public transit. Finally, in any situation ridiculous enough to knock out all forms of transportation, I could telecommute.
Because I have even a fraction of that redundancy, I don't have to be rushed into expensive decisions when my stuff breaks.
I'm not saying this to try to make you feel bad, just pointing it out so that you can give some thought not just to solving your immediate problem, but preventing similar problems from reoccurring in the future.
i could opt to get it repaired and buy a $1000 junker and drive it till my focus gets fixed but can I depend on a $1000 car???
If you just need a car until your Focus gets repaired, it probably makes more sense to rent a car for the couple of days the repair would take. (You should make sure up front that whatever shop you take it to could get the repair completed in a timely fashion, of course.) Or find somebody to bum a ride from, or bike, or take transit, or take Uber, or even call in sick if it comes to that.
Yes, reasonably-dependable $1000 cars exist. However,
finding such a car given the extremely small amount of time you have to look for it would be very difficult. Remember, not only would the dependable car have to be among the small number of choices available in your immediate vicinity at this specific point in time, you'd need to already have the mechanical skills to recognize it as such to pick it out from the chaff of unreliable $1000 cars. (And if you had those skills today, you probably wouldn't be asking this question in the first place.)
