I have a great looking 93 civic. The maintenance on this car is perfect and it has great fuel efficiency. One of the best things about this car is its ability to do perfect handling.
I purchased this 93 civic a few weeks back. I was in need of a substitute to my daily 2006 nissan sentra. However lately it spent more time in the mechanics shop than in my driveway and hence I wanted to get a substitute for it which would not hurt my pocket. In the end I purchased a 93 civic which had 150,000 miles on it.
Although the car is quite old but the overall maintenance of the car has been very good and the price was great. This is why I went with this car. Few of the positives of this car I have noted in the past 2 months are: great fuel efficiency, very high reliability, almost no maintenance issues, great fun to drive car. All this when the car is already more than 15 years old.
While purchasing the 93 civic I had a few difficulties which I would like to share now:
1. Searching: This is the most tricky part of all. There sure would be someone ready to sell a good car within your budget, no matter how low it is, but finding it is a bit tricky. I followed the following steps:
A) I asked all my friends to see if they have this model car between 92-99 model or with anyone they might know and who wanted to sell this car. This is a bit like hitting a target in dark but it is worth its time.
B) The next and most important step was to go to net. I searched for a civic in Craiglist, ebay motors, autos.aol and lemonfree in my area. I came up with around 5 options which had decent asking price, good maintenance, average mileage and all looked as genuine sellers.
C) As a final step if this does not result in any good result you can try a used car dealer. The reason why I let this be the last option is that they have limited models which they are trying to sell at a higher margin and they would also not deal in older cars like 93 civic below $4,000 as it would reduce their margin. However it is worth a try if earlier two options have failed.
2. Fix meeting: I made phone calls to the above 5 sellers I found on net and got a meeting fixed. As all of them were from nearby place I could manage all within a weekend.
3. Personal Inspection/test drive: Out of the 5 one of them had already sold by the time I visited him so I had 4 guys left. I did my personal inspection of the car checking for any flood damage, body rust, basic engine checking and then went for a test drive. Overall it is a very smooth process if the other person also believes you are a genuine buyer and are not wasting his time.
I did around 25 minute test drive in all the 4 cars noting down the major problems in all and the approx cost of fixing it. Finally I liked 2 cars one was this and another a 97 accord which also had good maintenance. However I left the negotiation and payment for future as I wanted to get it checked once more.
4. History records: For these two cars I checked the history records through CARFAX and found no major issues in them.
5. Final inspection: One of my friends is into cars. He has had many project cars done in his college days and is quite a pro when it comes to finding a fault. I took him to get both the cars inspected the next weekend. He listed the final expense I might have to make to get these cars in perfect condition and the parts that might need changing. It took 15-20 minute for each of the cars.
6. Negotiations: Before going for the final inspection I checked "KELLY BLUE BOOK"(KBB) website to find the approx value of both the 93 civic and 97 civic. You can go to used car section and then compare vehicles part. After inspection the accord owner was asking close to $4,100 compared to $3,100 which KBB showed and even after hard bargaining was not lowering the price and hence I went with civic which I got for $2,300.
7. Paperwork: Once the final deal is settled it is very important to take care of the paperwork. You need to get the smog test done by the seller and the most important thing being getting the “bill of sale” to be filled. After this the sales tax needs to be filled and finally the insurance should be revived as required. I kept my insurance minimum as the cost of the car was low and did not go for collision coverage.
General advice: if you are going for a lower budget, like less than $5000 it is always better to go for more reliable and fuel efficient cars. If you go with sportier cars the entire saving you might have done with the purchase of a used car will go away in the maintenance of the car. I saw one of my friends loose almost $5500 because of the purchase of a used sports car. Within 3 months the car gave up and became a hole of throwing the money in and finally he had to sell it as a parts car in another 6 months.
A great video of a 93 civic beating a 01 mustang GT(stock)
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