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!