[John V.]

I feel your pain. And believe me, my wife and I have driven many "lousy" cars when we were younger, cause the one I owned was always cheaper than anything I could afford to buy. Like you, I could always fix 'em myself for cheap.

Just trying to caution you, if you spend $4000 on an apparent creampuff and the trans in it blows up 6 months from now, then what?

Do you qualify for financing on a new car?

That $4000 might get you thru about the 1st year of payments.

How long did you own the Hyundai and what did you pay for it? How many miles on it when you bought it? Is it worth anything now?

If you paid $4000 for it 5 years ago, just to be comparable, you'd need to look at an '05 and probably pay a lot more for it based on inflation. And then you'd have to be just as lucky as with the Hyundai because it seems like it did well by you until the trans crapped out. No guarantee your '05 bargain will be as problem free as the '00 has been.

My '08 Civic cost about $20K. Today it is worth about $8K.

So it has only cost me about $2K per year in depreciation. Set of tires, a battery, about 8-9 oil changes (once every 8000 miles per the on board oil minder), a few air filters, a couple cabin filters, a few wiper refills, washer fluid, and a lot of car wash soap and water. Also a couple tail lamp bulbs IIRC.

I'm sure that's more than you have in the Hyundai over what may be a similar time span.

But the Honda doesn't need replacement yet. So the difference is a lot smaller than what you might think.

Another choice is to look at certified preowned. You can find very low mile 2012 Civics for about $16K and finance thru Honda if you qualify. Plug in your zip code and see what is available near you. I don't typically recommend buying used thru a dealer but financing can be an advantage, plus a powertrain warranty.

http://automobiles.honda.com/certified-used/

You can do this with any make, only picking the Civic cause that is what I know.

The LX model is the stripped version, the EX adds moonroof, alloy wheels. IIRC, the EX also adds 4 wheel disc brakes, the LX might have rear drums. We got the '12 EX-L with leather, heated seats, and heated mirrors but would have been happy with the EX as we were in '08, in fact my wife really hates the leather seats.