Rev up your engines,
oh that's hot, that's hot, today I'm going to talk about why it might
be a good idea for you to buy a beater car to drive around in, let's face it, cars are
getting more and more expensive to buy a new car, you get expensive new insurance because
the new car is worth a lot of money, if it gets stolen or wrecked the insurance company
has to shell out a lot so everything costs more and more, here's my beater car, years
ago I bought this 1994 Celica for $350 from one of my customers and it was a pretty beat
up looking car then, my customer had it painted at a high school
one of those vocational high schools and they didn't know how to paint the plastic so this
was all peeling out and orange was sticking out for underneath and the left front fender
was bashed in, and it had over 200,000 miles on it but it's a toyota and it ran great,
now yeah I spent $800 having my body guy put a fender on and paint the whole car silver
again, you don't have to do that but since I only paint $350 for it the investment was
still pretty small, and that was ages ago, the car still runs
like a clock, it's my beater work car, you can't beat that, because if you buy a shiny
new car, the first time somebody bashes it or it gets scratched you're going to go crazy
because your beautiful car is not imperfect and it has scratches on it,
why not buy one that already has scratches and dents on it, then you won't care as much,
and car theft, you don't need to worry about any stinking car jacking if your driving an
old beater car, who's gonna steal that, now when I was a young mechanic all mechanics
that run their own shops they had to drive a beater car and here's their reasoning,
if customers came into the garage and see that the owner is driving a brand new cadillac,
he must charge too much money to fix cars, we're not going to go there, so my father
who was a wise businessman always had a beater car that he drove back and forth to work,
and my mother she drove the nice car at home, so there's yet another advantage of having
a beater car, and I have a lot of customers that do that, even if their single they'll
have a really nice car that they use on the weekends, going to parties and stuff, but
they have a beater car that they put all the mileage on when they go to work, they put
the high mileage on the old car that isn't worth anything and keep their newer car much
fresher, just price the difference between insuring
this 94 celica and insuring a brand new car, there's a big deal of difference there, on
this thing I pay $350 on insurance, granted that is more than I pay for the car, if you
want to do percentages but really the insurance is relatively cheap when you're dealing with
a beater car versus a new one and that's money your never going to see back,
now another advantage of owning a beater car is you can often save money when it's inspection
time because like here in Texas if your beater car is more than 25 years old they only do
a safety inspection once a year, they don't do one of these emission tests where you might
have to spend a fortune on a new catalytic converter or have your engine rebuilt so it
meets pollution standards, once their over 25 years old here in Texas you don't have
to deal with all that crap, and if you live in a state like say Tennessee where they don't
do any inspections at all, hey you can drive your beater car forever,
now you don't want to buy a piece of junk that's falling apart but there's lots of good
cars out there, older toyotas and older hondas that got tons of life left in them but they
get higher mileage they don't cost that much or as I said before,
maybe the paint isn't perfect, maybe they have dings here and there, the value of that
car plummets way down but it still might run perfectly fine and you can always fix it a
little here and a little there, or if you just want it to look half way decent you can
do to one of those places that says, we'll paint any car for $199, it won't be a perfect
paint job but at least it will be one color, or if you don't care about perfection and
really like a beater car, I've seen guys that will get spray cans and they'll spray paint
the entire car with this spray paint can, and of course since beater cars are generally
older cars, their somewhat easier to repair than the modern computer high tech cars,
if you don't like the tech that it doesn't have like the video I made a few weeks ago,
you can always take the radio out, put one of those little Android units in that cost
a couple hundred bucks or so, then you'll have all the computer stuff you want for a
very small amount of money, just think if you find a good beater car, no more worrying
when you go out to eat that, oh the Valet is going to smash my car up, or I'll have
to park way out because the cars are all tight in there and someone is going to smash into
my car, you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore,
and with aftermarket parts getting less and less expensive and they work perfectly fine
at least if you get decent ones and don't go too cheap, repairing the older cars is
getting cheaper and cheaper, and guess what on the older cars there's a lot of stuff that
you can actually fix yourself, but in that respect don't go too far with a beater car,
I've had customers that thought that they had kind of a classic beater car like a Thunderbird
for the 70's and they didn't understand that most of those thunderbirds from the 70's were
kind of cookie cutter cars that never will be worth any kind of money, and they'd put
a whole bunch of money into them only to find that they just threw all that money away and
they'll never get it back because the car itself really isn't worth all that much,
so I say if you get a beater car, keep it a beater car, you can wash it and wax it and
clean it or whatever, just don't throw a bunch of money into it because realize that's your
beater car, and if you have teenagers and soon their going
to be learning how to drive, they get the beater car,
which can teach them a good lesson about cars, maintaining them, the expenses that cars have,
it's a good life lesson, because really if you buy a beater car wisely,
you might have a car that still has 60%-70% of it's life but your only paying like 10%
of what the original sticker price was, so I say long live beater cars,
and in that respect if any of you guys out there want to make a video of your beater
car, feel free to send it to me and if it's an interesting beater car, I'll stick that
video up so the whole world can see your beater car,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!
