Budgets and Cars, Cars and Budgets

Criteria to Focus on When Purchasing a Car

Imagine the look on friends’ faces when you pull up in your brand new Ferrari. Jaws drop as you rev your 500 horsepower turbo-charged engine. Their overwhelming silence says it all as you step out of your car. But too bad that Ferrari doesn’t actually exist because, well, you’re on a budget; a budget of $23,000 to be more specific. Why? Because $23,000 is a proper amount to purchase a car that can suit most needs. Fortunately, I’ve created this simple guide that covers safety, size, number of doors, engine type, and brand to help you decide which car is best for you. While the task of buying a car may be daunting, I'll make it feel like you have just purchased your very own exotic Italian car. 

1) Safety First

The most important element of a car is its safety rating. There’s no reason to drive a machine that can’t handle the average crash. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rates every car as either superior, good, acceptable, or poor based on the vehicle’s crashworthiness and crash avoidance and mitigation. Crashworthiness translates to how well the passengers are protected in a collision and crash avoidance and mitigation translates to the technology that can prevent a crash or lessen the severity (Top Safety Picks).

There are many technical details to determine a car’s rating, but long story short, you want a car that is an IIHS Top Safety Pick. Several examples include the Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata, Mazda 6 and more.

2) Size Matters

There are three sizes to consider under $23,000: sub-compact (Honda Fit), compact (Toyota Corolla), and midsize (Ford Fusion). Size is probably the factor that will cause you the most frustration due to an infinite number of factors. To make this easier, I’ve condensed size into two major categories: comfort and cargo space.

Comfort means how comfortable your passengers will be. As the driver, you should always be comfortable no matter what, and this won't change based on the car. What will change is how much leg and headroom your passengers will have. Generally, a midsize car can seat 5 adult males comfortably, a compact can seat 4 adult males comfortably, and a sub-compact can seat 4 adult males semi-comfortably.

This sub-compact sedan has little legroom for this passenger

The other major factor is cargo space. How much room you need will affect the size of the car. As a college student, it’s safe to assume that you will need to carry your dorm room around with you several times, leaning you towards a car with more cargo space.

Comfort and cargo space tend to be directly proportional. More comfort equates to more cargo space, which equates to a larger car, but unfortunately also a higher price. 

3) Number of Doors

A car's number of doors goes hand-in-hand with size. Most car manufactures offer the options of 2-doors (coupe), 4-doors (sedan), or 5-doors (hatchback). Which one you pick is entirely up to you.

The coupe looks sporty. Having only two doors gives it a sleek, expensive look for a cheap price. However don’t be fooled—it may look like a sports car, but it doesn’t perform like one. The other downside is convenience. Not only are the back seats slightly smaller, but also getting in and out from the back is a hassle because you constantly have to move the front seats.

Depending on your tastes, the hatchback can vary from ugly to sporty. Regardless of the look, the hatchback offers the most cargo space. The trunk becomes a door, combining the trunk space with the back seats. This allows you to stack your things higher than a normal trunk.

The sedan is the typical car you see that is the middle ground of the coupe and hatchback. In other words, you can’t go wrong with the sedan.

4) To Hybrid or not to Hybrid

That is the age-young question: whether 'tis worth it to buy a conventional or a hybrid car. A hybrid seems better on paper with its attractive 40+ mpg, however this doesn’t come without a hefty price. Hybrids are generally more expensive than their conventional engine counterparts, but do end up saving you money. Assuming you drive the average 10,000 miles per year with gas costing $4/gallon, it would require at least six years to cover the $3000 premium price tag (Govind). In the long run, a hybrid would indeed prove to be more economically sound than a conventional car (provided that gas doesn’t become cheaper than water), but that doesn’t mean there won’t be sacrifices.

These sacrifices come in the size of your car and additional packages. As I mentioned before, larger cars cost more. You could purchase a tiny sub-compact Toyota Prius C starting at $19,500, or you could purchase a larger compact Nissan Sentra for the same price. To compare similar sized cars, you can buy a Honda Fit with extra features such as leather seats for the same price as the stock Toyota Prius C.

What I’m saying is that hybrid fuel economy, while great, comes at the cost of size or luxury.

5) Brand Last

Because a car’s job is to get us from point A to point B, you want the car to be able to run as long as possible. Honda has the highest rated engines with only 1 out of 344 engines failing (20 Best Car Brands). The runner up is Toyota with 1 out of 119 engines failing. However this statistic isn’t the deciding factor as to which cars last the longest.

Warranty also plays a major role in car longevity. Each car brand offers different warranties that can make your average engine last longer than Honda’s impressive engines. There are different kinds of warranties such as basic and powertrain. Pay more attention to powertrain because it covers the parts that move your car. Hyundai currently has the best warranty with 10-year/100,000 miles powertrain. The runner up would be Kia, the subsidiary of Hyundai, with the same warranty (Hunting). Even though Hyundai’s engines aren’t on par with Honda’s, the warranty will save you repair money throughout the lifespan of your vehicle.

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Of course there are many different cars to choose from based on your personal preferences, but my ideal car on a budget would have to be Hyundai’s Elantra sedan. It’s a combination of good fuel economy, IIHS top safety pick, excellent passenger room (as a compact car), good cargo space, and the nation’s best warranty all while saving $3,000 than if I had bought a hybrid. By no means does this car drive like a Ferrari, but I’d like to think that it’s the best car I can get with a budget that fits my needs.

Congratulations! Now that you’ve reached the end, you’re ready to purchase your very own car. I know it’s hard to pick the perfect car, but the most important advice I can leave you with is this: test drive. Learning everything you can about a car means zilch if you don’t like the feel of the car. Drive as many cars as you want, as many times as you want—don’t worry about annoying the salesperson. He will try to shame you for wasting his time test driving, but remember you're the customer, and the customer is always right. So get up...

Work Cited

1. Govind, A. (2013, February 20). Synapse. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2013/02/20/buying-car-tight-budget.

2. Hunting, B. (n.d.). 9 Best New Car Warranty Programs. Retrieved September 27, 2015, from http://www.autobytel.com/car-buying-guides/features/9-best-new-car-warranty-programs-120917/.

3. The 20 Best Car Brads Listed. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/picturegalleries/10018481/The-20-best-car-brands-listed.html.

4. Top Safety Picks by year. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List.