Open the boot of most small cars from the 1960s and you would expect shopping, a spare wheel or perhaps a toolbox. In a Citroën 2CV Sahara, the engine would be taking up much of that space. The o
A retired police car can make an ordinary used-car listing look expensive. There is plenty of room, a purposeful set of steel wheels and the promise of hardware built for a harder life than the school
A remarkably low odometer reading has a way of making every other detail fade into the background. The paint may be dull, the tires may look suspiciously old and the service book may contain a de
There was a time when checking automatic transmission fluid involved a dipstick, a rag, and five minutes under the hood. Now the dipstick has vanished. The filler may be buried beneath the car, the fl
Park on a slope, move the shifter to P, take a foot off the brake, and most automatic cars will perform a small, familiar shuffle. The body rolls a fraction of an inch, stops with a muted clunk, then
A lot of people shop for used cars like they are shopping for avocados. They want the freshest-looking one, the lowest number, the cleanest surface, and they assume that if they can just find t
A lot of used-car shoppers act like mileage is the whole story. They open a listing, see six digits on the odometer, and mentally move on before they even finish the first photo. Somewhere alon
Shopping for a car online used to come with a familiar set of risks. A seller could lie about mileage, hide damage, use old photos, invent a maintenance history, or conveniently “forget&rdqu
The sticker price is the beginning of what a car costs, not the end. What you pay over the next five years in maintenance, repairs, and reliability surprises adds up to a number that can exceed the di
I was eighteen the first time I heard someone brag that their Toyota cracked 300,000 miles. It sounded like folklore: the Loch Ness Camry. Two decades and six very different cars later, I’ve