crapy resale value.

Hey, i have an issue i need some insight on. a yr ago i bought a 2002 sl1 for 13,900 after i rolled over some from a trade in. i basically did this cause i wanted a lower monthly payment. now i'm totally screwed cause the damn value of the car absolutely dropped. almost half. i had my car apraised at 4 dealerships and the max they will give me for it is 5 grand, and at this point i still owe 12,400 on the shit box. where do i turn from here? i mean i can't come even on this car because by the time i save the difference i'm upsidedown on the cars value will have gone down even more. i can't get rid of the negative. i mean even if i buy a car with 3000 in rebates thats still not taking away because the rebates are just an alusion to make you feel like your getting a deal when really your just getting the price they want you to pay anyways. i mean i'll always be negative. the car bussiness is the bigest scam ever. i'll never finance another car in my life from now on it's cash.

First off, sounds like you paid to much for it in the first place. You were upside down to start with. Second, dealers will never give you retail value for your trade in because they have no room to turn around and make money on it. Third, it's ALWAYS a bad deal when you borrow money to buy cars. By the time you make all the payments you've paid three times what you borrowed and the car isn't worth 1/4 of the original price.

Not the fault of the car.

First off, sounds like you paid to much for it in the first place. You were upside down to start with. Second, dealers will never give you retail value for your trade in because they have no room to turn around and make money on it. Third, it's ALWAYS a bad deal when you borrow money to buy cars. By the time you make all the payments you've paid three times what you borrowed and the car isn't worth 1/4 of the original price.

Not the fault of the car.


Well put Cat, sorry bro, but it looks like you are stuck with the car unless you want another hit to your wallet.

Was the car used? I can't believe you paid 13k for an SOHC..... Although this car will last you for an extremely long time if you take care of it properly... 13k is a lot of damn money for used Saturn. If it is brand new that's a different story. And yes... dealers screw you. Period. If you weren't expecting them to screw you I don't know what to tell you...

And what makes your car such a shit box?

Sounds like you got suckered with the old "we'll pay off your trade no matter how much you owe" line. If you traded in your old car which you still owed on for this car, they just rolled what you owed on your old car into the loan for the new one, hence you were upside down in the loan the minute you signed on the x. You got screwed, but it was perfectly legal and you should have known better.

Sure your payments were lower, hell, they probably financed you for 7 years at 7% to get them down. The only way to come out of this kind of thing ahead is to suck it up. Make sure that there is no prepayment penalty and pay as much as possible each month so that the interest will decrease and once it's payed for don't trade it in. Keep driving it until the wheels fall off. After 4 or 5 years of having it paid off all is well again because you can afford the occasional repair bill. It should last 10 years or more easy unless you drive a whole lot. Live within your means. If you have to finance a car for 7 years you cannot afford it. Also, you may want to check into gap insurance to cover the difference between what it's worth and what you owe in case you total it. Sorry man, life sucks sometimes and your not the first or the last this will happen to.

Curious, in 1 year you've only paid off $1500.00.
Well you did want lower payments.....
That works out to over 9 years of payments.
You'd better drive it nice so it'll last 10 years.

Curious, in 1 year you've only paid off $1500.00.
Well you did want lower payments.....
That works out to over 9 years of payments.
You'd better drive it nice so it'll last 10 years.


it looks more like that he paid just the miniuim each month .

yeah like cat said, it sounds like you got jipped big time on the price. depending on mileage, id say $5000 is good from a dealer. thats not its value, but pretty good. the cars didnt cost much new, so really their value stays pretty well. i mean my car was appraised at $2,800 with 160K+ on the odometer. the only option my car had was a sunroof, everything else was basic with the dohc and a manual. the car was a 97, and brand new retailed for like $13000

well i mean i'm really good at buying cars and most times i always get the deal i want, but in this case the cars value was one big issue. the car itself cost 8999. then you add in taxes. the car i traded in i had to roll over like 4k. my old monthly payment on the car i traded was 335, and i could afford it but i figured i want more cash a month to play with so i now pay 242. the thing that sucks is that the value of the car went from 7-9k to freakin 3800-5200 in less then a yr. if i woulda known saturns don't hold their value i woulda bought something else. i used to own a 2004 civic that i leased. a yr later i traded it in and didn't roll over a penny. i jump around from car to car a lot. i guess i'm gonna have to get use to the noisy engine and complete lack of power. at first it didn't bother me but now the damn thing drives like its gonna stall all the time. the freakin gas mileage is very eratic. one week i can manage 30+ and another week i'll get 25. i dunno i guess my plan to pay less for a car was a bad move. And i don't see the point in doubling up in payments cause the value drops faster then i can make money lol most of the dealers told me that within another yr the car will be worth 2k. which i know they always low ball the hell out of you on.

I financed my 97 sl2 at a used dealer in april 04 for 5995 and 1200 down. paid it off 0 interest in 2 years. had 115k at first. i just traded it in today with 138.5k and the used dealer was so cool about it, gave me 2000 even though it isn't worth that just to help with financing, when it has a rear main oil seal leak and oil pan leak, otherwise good condition, for a 98 blazer lt financed for 7500 and 1500 down. what a good day today:grinyes: (my credit is also worth less than an empty miller lite bottle btw)

Drives likes it goin' stall? What's the "SES" light say? Might be a simple fix. That might also have to do with the erratic fuel use.
Noisy engine? Well, they aren't Hondas but my '99 SW1 is quiet enough, with enough power to keep up with V6s. Since i drive a standard shift, it's nice to know what the engines doing without checking guages. After all, I didn't buy a Rolls-Royce. Maybe the exhaust system has a leak?
And if you want to save money, jumping from car to car won't do it. Buy something that does what you need, and drive it into the ground over 10 or 15 years.
Years ago, I drove my '90 Lada into a GM dealer, just to see a new model. The sales rep said " you know your cars' got no resale value." I replied that that was true, but it cost less than what I'd loose driving 1 of his models off the lot. He did agree. That $8200 (taxes included) Lada lasted 10 years, with minimal repairs. I got $50 for it as scrap. That works out to about $70 a month. A I still got the same looks as Mercedes drivers at the stop lights.

i never piut money down. cause the amount your putting down you could just negotiate. i found that in most cases the dealership will meet my price after not putting any down. putting money down is just a way for them to slip by you and not give you what you want for the car. mainly you have to look at what your end financing number is. cause if your paying 400 a month on a 13k car then you'll know there fucking with u. almost everytime i have bought a car the salesman will come out with a monthly payment that is about 100 higher then what it should be. in some cases dealerships have tryed to screw me so bad. one time the salesman tryed telling me my payment would be 500+. so i told him to screw and i went to another dealership and bought the same car for 335 a month. no money down and they paid my trade in full mind u. financed almost 20k for 72 months. sure the term was long but the other dealer wanted 500 for a 72 month term and wanted to give me 3k less for my trade too. on a side note car appraisers and salesmen are idiots. most times they know jack about the cars they are selling. one time i traded in a 2000 z24. first appraisal the car was dirty and had junk in it and they said we'll give you 4000 max. well a month later i go back to the same place, only this time i washed and waxed the car and cleaned the interior, and the ended up giving me 6800 for the thing. they are such fools. all they think is ewww shinny and clean. never ming the cigerate burns or rusted exhaust lol buying cars is an art that is learned only from experience. you gotta be smarter then the dealership. they always try and sucker you cause they know you are gonna negotiate a lower price. they have plenty of room to drop price and still make a huge profit. the key is finding a dealership that needs to sell cars. one dealership might be arrogant and sell cars all the time so they are gonna be pricks on negociations. another dealership might have a smaller inventory and they need to sell sell sell. so they are flexible and take hits. and by saying hits i mean still rapping you but not making as much as they intended off you.

Hmm.
I just read your last entry. If you get such great deals all the time, why did you write your 1st entry?
The dealers aren't idiots, they don't need to know about cars, they just need to sell them, at whatever the market will part with. (wouldn't you do the same if you where on commission?)
I treat car buying like buying pants - something I need to get around town in. And hopefully I won't spend too much, and they'll last a while.
Good luck.

If you're financing cars for 72 months YOU are the one that's getting raped. You're not sticking it to the dealer by not putting anything down. You pay alot more interest doing that way. Multiply your monthly payment by 72 to find out what your really paying for that car.

If you bought a beater for cash and then saved the money you would have been paying in cars payments, you could pay CASH for a nice car in no time and not get raped by the finance company.

I'm usually not one to flame... but your spelling (Removed by Moderator)

Also if you think not putting money down is helping you, you might be a little misinformed.

Why would you want to spend the next 6 years of your life paying for a car? I can't imagine even owning the same car for 2 years, let alone 6....

Buy used cars they're more fun to play with and you don't have to worry about the next 6 years of financial stability!

like i said the money you use to put down you can just negotiate. i completely agree that financing is a huge scam and thats the real problem, but at this point i can't get out of it. i owe 12,356 on a saturn worth 5k. only way to get out of this is to come up with 7500 bucks and try to sell the saturn privately, which who the (Censored by Moderator) is gonna buy a saturn, i'll be selling that thing for yrs. i realized that nomatter what you do, or how much you put down your always loosing out and you'll be upside down unless you pay cash for the entire thing. i mean lets say someone puts a couple grand down on any car. now you have to finance the remainder. but guess what that couple grand is gone cause now you have to pay the tax, and what if they don't give you the price that it's suppose to be. it's easy to get (Censored by Moderator) over buying a car under any case. i mean even with a (Censored by Moderator) load down, at a deal, on low interest you can still lose out if your car value drops badly after you sign those papers. it's very rare to have a trade in and not have to roll over anything. i was lucky once but i got screwed twice as bad buying this saturn cause the sentra i traded in dropped insanly in the little time i had it, and now the saturn dropped a ton. so i'm totally stuck with this car.

I mean it's not the end of the world, 242 isn't a bad monthly payment, many ppl get screwed way worse then that. i have come to realize that my only option is to keep this car until it literally dies, or get a better job where i can throw away money and invest 7500 dollars into a saturn only to break even and sell it. if anyone would even want this saturn. i will say this though i wish i would had done my research on these two last cars and saw how well they helf value. it cost me dearly. Ppl might not like hondas for what ever reason, but god damn those things hold value.

Well then it seems you should have done more research on the resale value of saturns before you bought one =)

Better luck next time mate.

If you have trouble with another members spelling, thats all you need to say.

Please do not post any words you wouldn't say to your grandmother, your priest, or a 3 year old child(you never know who may be reading the forums)

cars always cost money, ALWAYS. I don't understand why people who aren't actual dealers try to get their money back and such no matter what they paid for it. the thing you benefit from is credit which is why you finance if you don't wanna suck it up and save the cash you need.

I thought you only had a problem with a Saturn resale.
And now you add A Sentra too. You could problably add all the cars you've bought. It's the nature of cars, at least the ordinary ones. When I've driven cars off the lot I know I've lost money that day. It's a given. However, after 10 years or so, they've saved me money because I haven't bought 5 or 10 cars in those years, loosing every time.
Of course you can negotiate the amount you put down. If you put it all down there's nothing to finance, and you save finance charges. Or you can sometimes put nothing down and pay finance charges for 7 years or so. I know which is cheaper, and I've always bought cars I can afford.
BTW: Did you get the noisy engine / bad fuel economy sorted out? My Saturn drives fine, and if I drive very carefully, I can break through to 50 mpg.

cars always cost money, ALWAYS. I don't understand why people who aren't actual dealers try to get their money back and such no matter what they paid for it. the thing you benefit from is credit which is why you finance if you don't wanna suck it up and save the cash you need.

Exactly. I mean, I got my truck brand new for ~15,000 dollars including tax, tags and the works because I played several dealers off of each other on the phone, with a fax, and in person. I could sell my truck right now, two years later and probably get 9 to 11,000 out of it depending on my luck. So, I'm out 4 to 6,000 dollars even when the price is that low. You will almost never recoup the costs of vehicles, they depreciate over time unlike homes

The reason for a down payment is so that you will not have to pay so much interest that you will be upside down on the car. I owe several thousand less than I could get for it because I put 2000 dollars down. And trust me, the only way to get a better deal than I did is to work at the dealer and get at invoice price. But, barring any major problems, I'll still be driving this truck in 10 years and will have saved a ton of money (not on gas :grinno:) by the time I get rid of it. I'm really sorry to hear that you have such problems. But keep the car for 5 more years and it will work out. Once the car is paid off, put the amount of the regular payment into a high yield money market account and save it for the next car for 3 or 4 years.

oops, double post

I can break through to 50 mpg.

Holy crap batman, what model is yours. We have the 2000 SL2, and the best we have ever gotten is 36, and I thought that was good. Is your car running off batteries lol?

Hi wrparks
I have a '99 SW1. I have a K&N air filter, because the factory ones were too expensive, and this is the last (only) air filter I will buy, I hope. In the summer, when I drive more, I put synthetic oil in. When I drive VERY politely, not over 105 km/hr, excellerate slowly, brake slowly, etc, I can break 50 mpg. That's old Imperial gallons, not US gallons. If I did the conversion right, that's about 42 mpg US. Back and forth to work, I can get about 39 mpg.
Try driving like there's a brick UNDER the gas pedal, and leave 5 minutes early. It helps.

Hi wrparks
I have a '99 SW1. I have a K&N air filter, because the factory ones were too expensive, and this is the last (only) air filter I will buy, I hope. In the summer, when I drive more, I put synthetic oil in. When I drive VERY politely, not over 105 km/hr, excellerate slowly, brake slowly, etc, I can break 50 mpg. That's old Imperial gallons, not US gallons. If I did the conversion right, that's about 42 mpg US. Back and forth to work, I can get about 39 mpg.
Try driving like there's a brick UNDER the gas pedal, and leave 5 minutes early. It helps.

dang i drive like my pedal has to be on the floor all the time. and i get 22mpg (us) and thats with mobil 1 synthic. but mine is auto so it is not like i can control it that much in terms of when to shift and such.