[WA] Good First Car?

[Josh Eames]

Yeah, I've been very lucky. If I was buying a car with the type of money you are talking about I would be looking at all cars in that range.
Wide variation. Dont forget to google the ones you are looking at to get an idea of common faults etc. Forums are good, but only if there's a lot of posts about a particular make/model and fault type. That weeds out the whingers and people that thrash their cars and complain about stuff breaking.

Okay thank you, I'll do that and find out. I heard from a mate of mine that German cars are incredibly expensive, but he wasn't sure if it applied to Volkswagens too, so I'll find out about that too.
Thanks again mate

 

[hademall]

Hey Josh, I get your passion for the need to buy your first car, and I’m sure everyone on this site has been through the same experience. Okay, so your budget is ten grand, now that’s a lot of money for a seventeen year old, and I remember when I was seventeen and wanting to buy my first car, and looking around at all the cars I liked, but at the end of the day I only had fifty quid, which was about the equivalent of seventy five dollars back in 1975. I ended up buying a 1967 Singer Gazelle for forty five quid! It was only ten years old, full of rust, with baldy tyres, but it went a hundred miles an hour, and that was all I cared about! I had that car for about eight months before it gave up the ghost and I couldn’t afford to spend any more money trying to fix it up.
Now I understand you may have a passion for Holden cars, my first Holden was An HZ Kingswood by the way, but you have to be realistic, if you are going to spend your hard earned ten grand on a fifteen to twenty year old car, any car, not knowing its history, not knowing how many owners it may have had, not knowing how many K’s it’s really done, and more importantly not having anywhere near the safety features of a modern day car, then you can probably expect you may have to fork out at least between five and ten grand in the first year of ownership!
Now here’s my take, brand new small cars are around the sixteen to eighteen grand mark, they have all the safety features and fangle dangle stuff you need, okay they may not be a Holden Commodore or the like, but they will get you to where you want to go in reasonable comfort, they are less likely to break down when you’re on your way to meet that girl/guy whatever, that you want to make an impression on, and they’re less likely to see you standing on the side of the road with your hands full of oil trying to work out whether you’ve blown an acker marker valve or your thermo mejig has gone pffft!
So in essence, I guess what I’m trying to advise you, is to look at the possibility of getting a loan for that six or seven grand, checkout the interest you may pay on it, work out whether you will be able to make the repayments and take it from there.
Because at the end of the day, it may well save you a lot of money, heartache, and the embarrassment of turning up on that date with oil and grease all over your hands, mud on the knees of your best strides and a silly look on your face!
And you can rest assured in ten years time, when your still hankering after a Holden Commodore, there will be plenty of guys on this forum who will be so old and brain befuddled, you will probably be able to get one of them to give you their VF Commodore for next to nothing!
Just my take! Good luck mate, and I do mean that!

 

[VS 5.0]

Haha do you like Mirrabooka too?

Nah.....a bit further west.

 

[vc commodore]

Hey Josh, I get your passion for the need to buy your first car, and I’m sure everyone on this site has been through the same experience. Okay, so your budget is ten grand, now that’s a lot of money for a seventeen year old, and I remember when I was seventeen and wanting to buy my first car, and looking around at all the cars I liked, but at the end of the day I only had fifty quid, which was about the equivalent of seventy five dollars back in 1977. I ended up buying a 1967 Singer Gazelle for forty five quid! It was only ten years old, full of rust, with baldy tyres, but it went a hundred miles an hour, and that was all I cared about! I had that car for about eight months before it gave up the ghost and I couldn’t afford to spend any more money trying to fix it up.
Now I understand you may have a passion for Holden cars, my first Holden was An HZ Kingswood by the way, but you have to be realistic, if you are going to spend your hard earned ten grand on a fifteen to twenty year old car, any car, not knowing its history, not knowing how many owners it may have had, not knowing how many K’s it’s really done, and more importantly not having anywhere near the safety features of a modern day car, then you can probably expect you may have to fork out at least between five and ten grand in the first year of ownership!
Now here’s my take, brand new small cars are around the sixteen to eighteen grand mark, they have all the safety features and fangle dangle stuff you need, okay they may not be a Holden Commodore or the like, but they will get you to where you want to go in reasonable comfort, they are less likely to break down when you’re on your way to meet that girl/guy whatever, that you want to make an impression on, and they’re less likely to see you standing on the side of the road with your hands full of oil trying to work out whether you’ve blown an acker marker valve or your thermo mejig has gone pffft!
So in essence, I guess what I’m trying to advise you, is to look at the possibility of getting a loan for that six or seven grand, checkout the interest you may pay on it, work out whether you will be able to make the repayments and take it from there.
Because at the end of the day, it may well save you a lot of money, heartache, and the embarrassment of turning up on that date with oil and grease all over your hands, mud on the knees of your best strides and a silly look on your face!
And you can rest assured in ten years time, when your still hankering after a Holden Commodore, there will be plenty of guys on this forum who will be so old and brain befuddled, you will probably be able to get one of them to give you their VF Commodore for next to nothing!
Just my take! Good luck mate, and I do mean that!

Safety features???? This says to me, you are someone that relies on this stuff to try and prevent an accident, rather than actually trying to prevent an accident with driving skill....Not a real good bit of advise....

With the cash the op is willing to spend, look at the cars suggested, but don't spend the $10K buying it...Researching the problems with particular cars, and factor in the costs of replacing the problem parts before outlaying for the car....And once the car has been purchased, get those parts fixed before running around..

Falcons from EA through to FGX had wheel alignment issues where they scrubbed the inside edges and/or went left....Upto and including EL, the fix was buying an after market camber kit...BA through to FGX, they were able to be fixed the majority of the time, without buying the camber kit.

They also had issues with lower balljoints letting go....Not a pretty site, seeing a wheel dragging on the ground and a torn up guard....I have also seen barra engines that have torn the cam gear clean off the cam.....These seem to have occurred due to lack of oil changes.....The BA through to FGX also had issues with rear diff bushes flogging out....To fix was in the order of $1500.....

Commodores upto and including VY, with the V6 engines seem to be the best engine to get....Very minimal issues....They can have issues wearing the inner edges out of the rear tyres, especially if you lower it or have weight reguarly in the rear (ie people)....Fitting an aftermarket camber kit can ease the problem, but if you constantly have people in the rear, it is extremely difficult control the wear with an alignment.

Stereo...I bought a kenwood stereo and 4 channel amp for my VC....It is blue tooth compatible....All up it set me back a whopping $700....Not that expensive after all...I only bought the amp because I have industrial deafness and found when I turned up the stereo without the amp, the music distorted, so I shelled the extra cash for the amp to solve the problem...This was all bought from autobarn 12 months ago.

So factor in a stereo if the car you are looking at doesn't have what you want from it....

Hope this gives an insite to a couple of cars

 

[_R_J_K_]

Safety features???? This says to me, you are someone that relies on this stuff to try and prevent an accident, rather than actually trying to prevent an accident with driving skill....Not a real good bit of advise....

Yeah! Safety features are for stupid people! I agree, if you value safety features in your car, you're obvs a pretty terrible driver. I've always thought air bags and crumple zones were a scam concocted by big auto and that traction control was only invented to sell computer chips. Really don't know why they're in Commodores.

You're exactly like those idiots that think ABS on motorcycles is a bad thing because somehow slamming on the brakes and having ABS kick in to stop you from low siding or T-boning a car when somebody runs a red or cuts you off or pulls out in front of you in well under a second makes you a bad rider (and that the alternative is somehow better). I don't know how you think these things factor into everyday driving - but news flash: it's really hard to get those features to activate, and when they do, you know about it, and it's not a good time. Outside of a pro circuit racer, I challenge you to find anybody (including yourself) that has never instinctively swerved or slammed on the brakes as hard as they could ever when something turned to custard in front of them. I can tell you now, I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd had ABS to help me stop in time for the kangaroos that have decided to jump out in front of my cars (or a worse possibility, just like the commercial, a child chasing a ball or riding a bike?) - does that make me an unskilled driver? If you think your "skill" and inherently slow human reaction time (inherent in everybody) is somehow better than (or at least isn't improved/complemented by) safety technology, you're dreaming.

That and there aren't a lot of cars from the last 15 years that don't have that stuff anyway.

 

[vc commodore]

Yeah! Safety features are for stupid people! I agree, if you value safety features in your car, you're obvs a pretty terrible driver. I've always thought air bags and crumple zones were a scam concocted by big auto and that traction control was only invented to sell computer chips. Really don't know why they're in Commodores.

You're exactly like those idiots that think ABS on motorcycles is a bad thing because somehow slamming on the brakes and having ABS kick in to stop you from low siding or T-boning a car when somebody runs a red or cuts you off or pulls out in front of you in well under a second makes you a bad rider (and that the alternative is somehow better). I don't know how you think these things factor into everyday driving - but news flash: it's really hard to get those features to activate, and when they do, you know about it, and it's not a good time. Outside of a pro circuit racer, I challenge you to find anybody (including yourself) that has never instinctively swerved or slammed on the brakes as hard as they could ever when something turned to custard in front of them. I can tell you now, I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd had ABS to help me stop in time for the kangaroos that have decided to jump out in front of my cars (or a worse possibility, just like the commercial, a child chasing a ball or riding a bike?) - does that make me an unskilled driver? If you think your "skill" and inherently slow human reaction time (inherent in everybody) is somehow better than (or at least isn't improved/complemented by) safety technology, you're dreaming.

That and there aren't a lot of cars from the last 15 years that don't have that stuff anyway.

Over the years you learn how to actually look for things. Swerve or brake to miss a child...How is airbags and abs going to stop injuring a child, or a person for that matter if they get hit by a car? It could prevent you from getting hurt when you slam into a tree/house.power pole....

I was taught and have taught my kids to drive watching from fence line to fence line....Has worked for me for 40+ years, as I have had 3 accidents in that time....First 2 were when I first got my licence, being an idiot.....The last was me backing a truck up in a shopping centre and some ******** decided to drive behind me whilst backing up....That was about 10 years ago....

By learning how to actually drive a car, without all these aids, you learn how to modulate brake pressure, especially when you initially lock up and you learn how to swerve and not hit things....Having these aids don't teach you how to prevent the accident....

Kangaroos...Interesting thing to bring up....Every couple of years I drive from S.A to QLD..I head through western NSW and QLD....I use plastic $5.00 shuroos and never had to swerve to avoid one yet, let alone hit one...You actually see the roos prick their ears up and move away from the noise source.....So that lousy $5 saved me thousands from swerving into a bank or tree, or slamming on my brakes to miss that roo but ram a tree or embankment as a result....So yep, I'm an idiot that has lousy reactions

 

[hademall]

Safety features???? This says to me, you are someone that relies on this stuff to try and prevent an accident, rather than actually trying to prevent an accident with driving skill....Not a real good bit of advise....

With the cash the op is willing to spend, look at the cars suggested, but don't spend the $10K buying it...Researching the problems with particular cars, and factor in the costs of replacing the problem parts before outlaying for the car....And once the car has been purchased, get those parts fixed before running around..

Falcons from EA through to FGX had wheel alignment issues where they scrubbed the inside edges and/or went left....Upto and including EL, the fix was buying an after market camber kit...BA through to FGX, they were able to be fixed the majority of the time, without buying the camber kit.

They also had issues with lower balljoints letting go....Not a pretty site, seeing a wheel dragging on the ground and a torn up guard....I have also seen barra engines that have torn the cam gear clean off the cam.....These seem to have occurred due to lack of oil changes.....The BA through to FGX also had issues with rear diff bushes flogging out....To fix was in the order of $1500.....

Commodores upto and including VY, with the V6 engines seem to be the best engine to get....Very minimal issues....They can have issues wearing the inner edges out of the rear tyres, especially if you lower it or have weight reguarly in the rear (ie people)....Fitting an aftermarket camber kit can ease the problem, but if you constantly have people in the rear, it is extremely difficult control the wear with an alignment.

Stereo...I bought a kenwood stereo and 4 channel amp for my VC....It is blue tooth compatible....All up it set me back a whopping $700....Not that expensive after all...I only bought the amp because I have industrial deafness and found when I turned up the stereo without the amp, the music distorted, so I shelled the extra cash for the amp to solve the problem...This was all bought from autobarn 12 months ago.

So factor in a stereo if the car you are looking at doesn't have what you want from it....

Hope this gives an insite to a couple of cars

I’m not sure you read my advice to Josh properly. (Probably not) You seemed to be of the opinion that I may lack certain driving skills that may prevent an accident, and so therefore I am heavily dependent on my mode of transport having all the latest high tech safety equipment to get me safely from A to B.
I currently drive an eight year old Mitsubishi Triton single cab with an alloy tray, manual by the way.
In my driving life (not including the cars I shouldn’t have been driving), I have owned over thirty cars. I have just recently sold my 1981 Hino AM100 Bus which had all the safety features of a concrete block on wheels. I have a Heavy Rigid Licence, which over the years has enabled me to drive many heavy vehicles and buses. And up until recently I owned five manual Vespa Scooters from a 1964 Super up to a 2007 PX200 and also a 1964 Lambretta six 150, with a GP 200 engine.
Most of these old scooters had eight inch wheels and really **** brakes.
The VF Commodore my wife owns, is probably the safest car I’ve driven, in my mere forty seven years of driving. Oh and touch wood,, I’ve only had one accident which wasn’t my fault.

So in response to your assertion that my driving skills may not be of the standard you seem to aspire to, due to my apparent need for safety features to keep me alive, I would suggest you read what I have just written, maybe twice if you have some difficulty, and then perhaps apologise!

 

[vc commodore]

I’m not sure you read my advice to Josh properly. (Probably not) You seemed to be of the opinion that I may lack certain driving skills that may prevent an accident, and so therefore I am heavily dependent on my mode of transport having all the latest high tech safety equipment to get me safely from A to B.
I currently drive an eight year old Mitsubishi Triton single cab with an alloy tray, manual by the way.
In my driving life (not including the cars I shouldn’t have been driving), I have owned over thirty cars. I have just recently sold my 1981 Hino AM100 Bus which had all the safety features of a concrete block on wheels. I have a Heavy Rigid Licence, which over the years has enabled me to drive many heavy vehicles and buses. And up until recently I owned five manual Vespa Scooters from a 1964 Super up to a 2007 PX200 and also a 1964 Lambretta six 150, with a GP 200 engine.
Most of these old scooters had eight inch wheels and really **** brakes.
The VF Commodore my wife owns, is probably the safest car I’ve driven, in my mere forty seven years of driving. Oh and touch wood,, I’ve only had one accident which wasn’t my fault.

So in response to your assertion that my driving skills may not be of the standard you seem to aspire to, due to my apparent need for safety features to keep me alive, I would suggest you read what I have just written, maybe twice if you have some difficulty, and then perhaps apologise!

No, more along the lines of giving advise to buy a car that has all these safety devices fitted being the best option, when actually buying a car without these devices makes you a better driver.....

 

[_R_J_K_]

Over the years you learn how to actually look for things. Swerve or brake to miss a child...How is airbags and abs going to stop injuring a child

By learning how to actually drive a car, without all these aids, you learn how to modulate brake pressure, especially when you initially lock up and you learn how to swerve and not hit things....Having these aids don't teach you how to prevent the accident....

Ahhh, because ABS might actually stop you from locking up and barreling over the kid if they run out from behind a bus? Even if you anticipate for that, it can still happen because you assume every interaction is predictable and will unfold in the same way. Hell, you might even still hit the kid with ABS if they run out close enough to you, although this time with much less force.

Modulate your crusty foot and throw your spaghetti arms all you want, it still won't be faster than ABS or traction control. Outside of that, your whole description of "skill" here relies on your perceived ability to see through objects and around corners, in every direction, and that the possibility of your own human error doesn't exist and that you can negotiate every situation no matter how difficult or how quickly it happens. Sure, you're not wrong about vehicle control and environment scanning, but these features don't service those scenarios, and they don't somehow compensate for skill in regular driving.

If you have the time to think about foot modulation or think about the safety features in your car compensating for you when something is unfolding in front of you, and you manage to avoid that something, then it's not these features saving you. These are last line devices that react in literally milliseconds based on measurements from hundreds to thousands of samples per second.

No, more along the lines of giving advise to buy a car that has all these safety devices fitted being the best option, when actually buying a car without these devices makes you a better driver.....

So if one of your kids crashes with all you've taught them it automatically means you're gonna tell them it's because they're a bad driver? Or if they're seriously injured by (or injure) somebody else in something that may have been avoidable with these features, it's somehow better that they (or the other person) didn't have them the one time they may have needed them?

 

[vc commodore]

Ahhh, because ABS might actually stop you from locking up and barreling over the kid if they run out from behind a bus? Even if you anticipate for that, it can still happen because you assume every interaction is predictable and will unfold in the same way. Hell, you might even still hit the kid with ABS if they run out close enough to you, although this time with much less force.

Modulate your crusty foot and throw your spaghetti arms all you want, it still won't be faster than ABS or traction control. Outside of that, your whole description of "skill" here relies on your perceived ability to see through objects and around corners, in every direction, and that the possibility of your own human error doesn't exist and that you can negotiate every situation no matter how difficult or how quickly it happens. Sure, you're not wrong about vehicle control and environment scanning, but these features don't service those scenarios, and they don't somehow compensate for skill in regular driving.

If you have the time to think about foot modulation or think about the safety features in your car compensating for you when something is unfolding in front of you, and you manage to avoid that something, then it's not these features saving you. These are last line devices that react in literally milliseconds based on measurements from hundreds to thousands of samples per second.


So if one of your kids crashes with all you've taught them it automatically means you're gonna tell them it's because they're a bad driver? Or if they're seriously injured by (or injure) somebody else in something that may have been avoidable with these features, it's somehow better that they (or the other person) didn't have them the one time they may have needed them?

Me only having the 3 accidents in my life time one can only assume my driving style obviously works, therefore me passing on that driving style to my kids seems a natural progression. 2 being my own stupid fault and the 3rd not my fault...My 5 kids, the eldest being 34 and none of them having an accident I can only assume my teaching methods might work too....

If you hit someone, no matter how slow, if in the wrong spot, with or without ABS brakes, they can die....Your school bus scenario....My line of thought is, school bus, chance of kid running out behind it, off the loud pedal, foot hovering over the brake pedal...What your post insinuates is, school bus, stay at a steady speed, because if a kid ducks out from behind it, I have ABS brakes, so less chance of hitting him...

BTW, I live right near a primary school, which caters for the disabled kids as well, so the chances of hitting a kid rises a bit more with them being disabled, as their road sense is diminished more....So it heightens my awareness coming home.. My street is a D shape and the school is in the straight section of the D

Someone has an accident, they're not automatically a bad driver.....Relying on safety features and not really concentrating on your surroundings, because you have these features is the receipe for an accident, which then puts you in the bad driver category....


All these safety features breed complaincy and it really shows with this post.....You get the mind set, I have ABS brakes, so I can stop easier so I don't have to concentrate as hard on my surroundings....I have airbags, so if I hit something, it will help stop injuries...Yes, airbags will prevent and/or minimise injuries, but I'd prefer not to hit something to begin with, which seems to be an idiotic idea...

So yes I have an idiotic mindset, where prevention is better than cure....And all these safety features seem to give the mindset it is a cure not the prevention....