I think the key phrase here is “no brain,” because this is how you end up with an aged car that has cracked belts, soft hoses, and dry cracked gaskets, things that age with time as much as mileage.
The only way to determine which is the better deal is to have both thoroughly checked out by the same qualified mechanic.
I have rather the opposite opinion
For me, there’s not much difference between 150K and 200K
Both are probably on the downslope, so to speak
I see it this way . . . get the 2015, because it will have lots of safety features . . . and other standard equipment, for that matter . . . which the 2004 will not have
I’m only mentioning this in the hypothetical situation that those two cars are the only options
if it were me, I’d spend more money on a car that’s only a few years old and has 60K or less
Yes, there is a good reason you don’t see too many used Mitsubishis or Isuzus, or Chevrolet Cavaliers or Aveos or Metros, Ford Escorts, Dodge Neons, etc. The reason is because people who own cars that have depreciated below about $2000 are often unwilling to pay for the required maintenance, and instead just drive until something expensive breaks, then off to the junkyard. And of course, those same people who ran an otherwise decent quality car into the ground will be the first to complain about what a lemon it was.
Many years ago, I worked with a woman who frequently said the following to me:
Your car is being repaired AGAIN?
When I would explain that it was in the shop for scheduled maintenance, she was clearly unable to distinguish between repairs and maintenance.
Something tells me that she was not unique in that type of ignorance.
lol … similar story, I have a neighbor who’s driveway sports three 2015 & newer cars, Tesla, Mercedes, Lexus, and pretty much ignores me, my cars, & my routine activities; but when he sees me working on a car, he comes over immediately and asks “what’s wrong?” He even asks me what I’m doing when I washing my car … lol …
Yet I see a number of really old Civics, Corollas, Mazdas, etc… why?
My guess is the original owners took good care of them, so the current owners who bought them used are living on borrowed time.
That’s the case with my Civic. The cost of my next set of tires will probably exceed the car’s value.
Another possibility, certain car designs tend to produce higher repair costs than others. For example on some cars you can easily replace a brake rotor just by unbolting it from the hub. On other designs the rotor is part of the hub & bearing assembly. Yet another, Automatic transmission failures seem to be a common reason why cars get scrapped, and maybe Civics, Corollas, and Mazdas have more robust automatic transmissions, or there’s a higher % of those 3 make/modles that sport manual transmissions.
There’s a lot of these same three older cars still on the road here in San Jose too.
I tend to support @George_San_Jose1 take on this, as it conforms with what I think: certain maker/car design is better suited to keep them longer on the road.
Obviously, these make for good vehicles to buy used, other things being equal.
Some makes/models are simply failure-prone IMHO.
Chrysler is especially “good” at it, but multiple makes/models are known to be notoriously unreliable, so they are not alone.
Ford Transit for example was mentioned recently in anotehr thread on delivery vehicle selection.
These cars hold their value really well. So a person with a 15-year old Honda Civic will pay the $900 or so to change the timing belt when due. They’ll pay to replace the other belts, hoses, brakes, change the transmission fluid, etc. when needed. The person with a 15-year old Dodge Neon won’t, and then when it stops running, off to the junkyard it goes. And of course, what a lemon it was. It wasn’t the cheapskate owner’s fault…
Then the question would be on why Civic holds its value way better than Dodge Neon?
Is it subjective or objective?
It’s both.
It’s a measure of build quality and a measure of reputation, whether deserved or not, and considering how weak the automatic transmissions were in the 6th generation Civic, its reputation as a great car is not necessarily deserved unless you own one with a stick shift (like I do).
In the company I used to work for back in 2000 a lot of young guys used to copycat car choices and something like half of them got Dodge Intrepids… which ALL started to fall apart before even warranty lapsed.
I did not follow them and settled on Ford Focus wagon, which a year later proved to be no better than that Dodges 
Later I transitioned to Nissans and later Subarus, which were trouble-free for me for more than a decade.
Somehow I was not and now I’m not inclined to transition back to big-three produced cars anymore.
Recently, Nissans let me down really hard - 3 CVT failures in the family in the span of 2 years…
I came to appreciate higher price tag and build quality of Toyota and Honda… not sure if they gonna disappoint me as much as other brands I had before, but so far only 5 Subarus my family used to own were untarnished.
Update: '96 Nissan Altima and 2000 Nissan Altima served me really well and were replaced past 120K miles with no major failures.
Experience and anecdote are powerful influences. I’ve bought one car in my entire life. Every other car was a hand-me-down from my mother or my grandmother.
When my father died in 1992, and my mother moved back to Texas. I stayed behind in Florida, and my mother gave me the family’s 1985 Buick Skyhawk. In 1984 and 1985, the Chevy Cavalier (the same car with a different badge) was the top seller for good reason. It was a sturdy car that lasted a long time for its era. I drove that car hard, and only took moderate care of it, but it lasted me as long as any car from that era could have.
When my grandmother was ready to get a new car, she sold me her 1984 Mercury Marquis for $1,000, the amount she was offered for it as a trade-in. She took such good care of it that it it was an offer I couldn’t refuse, but come to find out, the dealership that was servicing it wasn’t taking such great care of it. It came with a clogged radiator and the rear brakes were so worn that the bolts inside the pads on the rear brake shoes had worn groves into the drums. That car didn’t do well in the late 1990s. The ethanol in the e10 ate away at the rubber parts in the carb, so I ended up needing a carb rebuild every couple months. That car never ran well for me.
Then, in January 1999, I bought my first car, a 1998 Honda Civic DX two-door coupe with a manual transmission, and in spite of it now being an eyesore with no air conditioning, I’m still driving it. Since I learned to ride a motorcycle 2005 I’ve owned three Honda motorcycles, and I’ve never had a serious problem with any of them. Nor have I had a problem with my '98 Civic that I’d call a design flaw or a fault of the manufacturer. I replaced the struts for the first time at about 185,000 miles (and again recently under warranty), I replaced the radiator at about 250,000 miles, I replaced the clutch at about 260,000 miles, and a few years ago, I got a new head gasket somewhere near the 300,000 mile mark.
Against my recommendation, my now ex-girlfriend bought a 1999 Chevy Cavalier. That car was reliable enough, but she ended up selling it when it started having problems about six years ago. In the end she sold it because it leaked carbon monoxide into the car’s interior. Nobody could find the source of the leak, so she dumped it as a trade-in.
The chances are good that my next car will be a Honda or a Toyota, and owning four trouble-free Hondas over the past 20.5 years is a big part of that. If I thought the build quality of a Ford or Chevy hatchback was as good as a Honda Fit, Toyota Prius, or Toyota Yaris, I’d be happy to save money by buying one of them, but deep down inside, I know GM, Ford, and Chrysler haven’t been able to make decent profits on small cars in decades. The only vehicles they can turn a profit on are trucks and SUVs, and frankly, as sad as that makes me, I just can’t see buying in inferior car to support a company that can’t compete.
This might be urban myth, but there was a story back in the day that Chrysler bought a Honda Civic, tore it down, and based the Dodge Neon on what they discovered. In retrospect, I can’t see how this can possibly be true. My brother and I rented a Dodge Neon and drove it from South Florida to Houston in the late 1990s, and I was surprised at how high the engine revved just to maintain highway speeds. How could that car have been based on the Honda Civic?
Oh man, you bought one of the very first Ford Focuses . . . yeah, I had always read that they weren’t very good cars
We have a few Ford Focuses in our fleet, but I think most of them are 2006 or 2007 model year
While I don’t think they’re particularly high quality, I also don’t think they’re disastrous. Average, no more and no less
I will say they do seem to be slightly more fun to drive, versus the average Corolla of the same era
Back in its heyday, the Focus was highly rated. The second generation Focus, which was first developed and tested in Europe before being introduced in the US, was supposed to be as good as the Civic.
Maybe it’s bias, but I not only notice lots of 6th generation Civics on the road, but I also see 5th Generation Civics too. Yet I don’t see any Ford Foci from the same era as the 6th generation Civic.
Yeah, I remember when the Focus first came out, several magazines gave it top marks
I notice the same thing here in Los Angeles. And you know rust is not the reason they’re no longer being driven, not here, anyways
Fortunately, I bought a “rental coverage” with it, so I was driving mostly rentals, while Focus was sitting in warranty repairs.
By 18K miles or so I’ve seen the writing on the wall and dumped that car for '96 Altima, which served me very well for around 4 years, at which point it became '98 Subaru Legacy, which I also loved.
I have a Ford truck and it’s been pretty reliable. I mean for its ancient vintage. I’d like to see Ford return to the top of the heap myself, being born into a Ford sedan family. Galaxy, Galaxy 500, Taurus etc. I don’t see any fundamental reason a Ford sedan should be any less reliable than a Toyota, Mazda, or Honda. Other than perhaps Ford isn’t interested in reliability aspect as much as offering a car with a lot functions beyond what is necessary to just get where you are going. The Ford Focus has seemed to get quite a few posts here about drivability and engine performance problems, often traced to the EGR system; and posts about the dual-clutch automatic transmission. Has Ford properly addressed those two yet? Are there other higher priority reliability issues with Ford sedans still remaining?