Luckily my parents are helping cover a small part of the insurance, and I do repairs myself ( I doubt there will be many on a brand new car anyway). thats why i'm overthinking buying it, I don't want to work for the car lol.. The only thing it would impact is a few thousand dollars a year for insurance/gas and the depreciation loss when I sell it

 

Couldn't agree more Tom ! As I've owned 6 Mustangs including an 82 Mercury Capri..

Out of those 7 cars, only 3 ever saw snow, which were the 82 Capri, 78 King Cobra and 90 GT..

Since then, we use more practical vehicles during the season while the last 4 Mustangs were always garaged every year..

 

I live in SoCal, and have owned a '74, '81, '89, '98, '02, and currently my '05.


To be honest, Mustangs aren't really practical for ANYTHING. Non-existent rear seat, crappy gas mileage, crude tech (until this year), no trunk space, and non-existent bad-weather handling.


However, practicality goes out the window with the turn of the key and the resulting V8 rumble! I was driving recently with the top down and pulled up to a stop sign, and a 6 year old kid started pointing and yelling to his dad: "look dad, it's a Mustang!" There's nothing quite like it on the road as far as being instantly recognizable (although the Challenger comes close!) and that's why I love love love my Pony and won't give it up, practicality be damned!

 

I have hauled a lot of stuff in my 06. 12 foot long boards, pavers, all sorts of trim....

 

Haha. So I'm not the only that's taken advantage of the deep trunk, I almost always have 2 fishing poles in there and football, bball. Gotta be prepared lol

 

Drive a car off the lot and it loses 20-25% of its value. Them's just the facts. And I've seen used cars go for as much as new ones depending on available incentives. Before I started buying new cars, I'd spend a grand on clunker with working A/C and drive it until the wheels fell off and then spend another grand and do it over again.

I used to buy a new car every 2-5 years. My last car I kept for 5 1/2 years. This one I plan on keeping at least 6 years (I paid cash for it and the title is mine). I'm not worried about residual value. I just want to drive it and enjoy it, if it lasts 10 years without the engine going kaput, awesome. 15 years? fantastic.

This one's a keeper and I'd honestly like to see my daughter Graduate High School and still have it. (she's 7 now).

And despite what you see on the car shows. Almost no one MAKES money on buying old muscle cars and restoring them from the ground up. You can spend 50k to restore a great muscle car and the market will dictate 30k if you're lucky.

 

Coulda been an impulse purchase, and then he realized he had to start making payments on it. :O

I can't tell you how many times I've seen ads in the paper from people trying to unload a car for "taking over the payments" and you find out the payments are $700 or $800 a month. Insane.

 

That's one of the main reasons why survivor cars are bringing in the big bucks... more than restorations in many cases.

 

This is funny, my buddy doesn't even have a muscle car and his 6 year old son loves mustang. Everytime I'm with them and his son sees a mustang he freaks out lol

 

I totally agree 100% and feel the very same way.. Which is exactly why I still love my 2006 pony and won't ever give her up either

 

I dunno... drove mine since new(ohio- so whenever no salt on the roads- 9~9 1/2 months of the year usually) and while carseats in the back were a bit of a PITA to access years back, otherwise, its been fine...hauled a electric dirtbike home one Christmas from toys r us, fold the seats down theres quite a bit of room... we took 2 out west last summer, I rode in backseat of mine a few times, let the older sons sit up front/drive- sometimes the wife and I rode together, the 4 boys in the other car... was a fun trip for everyone...our 6 year old made the most of it by chatting on those little FRS walkietalkies the whole way... anyways, was surprised how comfortable the backseats were... I used to have a 85 camaro, talk about useless rear seats...no footwell depth, no kneeroom, no headroom, glare/sun on your head from the big hatchback- only rode back there once, pretty much never wanted to do that again...
last summer the cars did great on the trip, I got around 24mpg, wife got around 25 in her V6... her, I, 4 sons, picked my Mom up in Colorado, went to grand canyon- really they are not bad highway cruisers, ride only a tad firmer than my old Mark VII LSC, loved taking that car on long trips too... 5800 miles in the mustang was awesome- in '90 did the almost the same route in the camaro, liked the drive, but not the ride...that thing rode like a skateboard compared to the mustangs.
to me impractical would be having both kids and a corvette kinda thing- the newer mustang rear seats are adequate, the mileage reasonable, combined with the looks/feel/sound, think these were some of the most bang for the buck ever put out- for a fun/family car... in our case, 4 sons just meant we needed an extra mustang as the older boys are now drivers, caravanning is not commonplace anymore- yeah, two cars = bad mileage, but if driving a car you really enjoy, its not so bad. seriously, these were the only cars I ever had that I didnt mind making the payments on- even when they sat out the winters, etc... love these cars, practical or not

and depreciation? if you never plan on getting rid of them, theres no such thing