I own a 98 Olds Achieva that i bought used w 26k and it now has 80k on it. The car has the usual collection of dings and I was sideswiped by a hit and run driver who was never caught so the left frt fender and liner are shot- there is no frt bumper and the drivers mirror is snapped off. I just replaced a head gasket on the lemon of a 3.1 liter v6 ( the second time since I bought the car) and that was a cool 1000.00- My question is should I buy some used bolt on parts and have the car painted and drive it another couple of years or should I just scrap it and start over ? The book value of the veh is about 3000.00 if it is mint condition and I guestimate the parts (self installed) at about 1000.00 plus painting. What to do?
If I was doing this I wouldn’t put any time or money into it. I’d sell it as is and move on.
You can drive it until the next malfunction. It doesn’t have to look good. A used fender won’t cost too much and a bumper doesn’t have to be perfect either. The mirror doesn’t even have to match. This is when owning a car is great: there’s no pressure. If you can learn to stop caring too much. It’s your metal (plastic) and you can goof around with it.
That’s a tough call to make. I’d suggest looking on autotrader.com and see what people are getting for one of those. It would surprise me if one of those would bring anywhere near $3k. I think the money needed to fix everything would be better spent on another car and dump the Olds on craigslists. If you could live with it beat and ugly for a while, fix the minimal things to make it legal like the bumper and mirror, and get some of your investment back from use for a while.