Is it time to let go of this car?

Post date: 2018-04-24 15:28:40

Reasonably expensive repair on an old car. Keep it or scrap it? And if we scrap it, what next?

My wife and I have a 2004 Buick Century, which we inherited from her grandmother in2012. It's an ungainly boat of a car and it lived on the streets of NYC for a couple years, so cosmetically it's in pretty bad shape, but it's always run well, and it's sturdy. It's like driving a tank.

A couple days ago I said we should take it in cuz the brakes were feeling a little wonky and the front left turn signal isn't working. I assumed it was just brake pads, but it turns out the front and rear brakes need to be replaced, as well as two tires. It all adds up to about $950.

We can afford it, but with repairs that expensive we were like "should we just be getting a. Ew car?" The argument for doing that is that this car is dinged all to hell and is 14 years old. Maybe a newer better car could be purchased for a few grand. The argument against is that the car runs more or less fine, and it doesn't even have 100k miles on it (I think it has 86k?).

I'm not a car guy, so here are my questions.

1. Should we repair this car?
2. If not, what should we do as a replacement? Our goal is a car for a couple grand that will last us ~5 years or so. Is that unrealistic?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

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