[jyl]

I’ve bought two cars with loans. My first “nice” car after law school, and it turned out to be not a great car, but it was fun for a while. Then when gas prices shot up to $4+ in 2006, my wife refused to drive her Range Rover in account of it was getting <10 mpg, wanted one of them newfangled Prii. Which was a very good car, and the gas savings of going from 9 mpg to 40+ mpg actually made sense. Otherwise, I’ve always had used cars, some quite old. Sometimes people probably wondered what was wrong, but I think my old cars have been way more interesting than whatever new car I could have gotten for 3X the price at the time. My latest purchase is a 2004 W211 estate, picked up for $6,500 with 29,750 miles last year. What would a current model car of equivalent quality, comfort, and interestingness cost? 7-8 X more?