Suppose you’re looking for one car that’ll do it all. Slip into compact spaces with ease. Accelerate and handle with grace. Fit four adults and their luggage in a well-appointed interior with little apparent cost-cutting. Command the road at highway speeds. Let’s throw in 30 MPG fuel economy for good measure.
Now suppose you’re looking to spend $15k or so, and the cheaper the better. If you’re thinking about new cars, don’t waste your time. Even the cheapest new car on the lot will likely surpass the $15k threshold, and the only boxes it’ll check are the ones pertaining to parking and fuel economy.
But for the same money or quite possibly far less, you could have a sixth-generation (Mk6) Volkswagen Golf. Step up to the 200-horsepower GTI version if you’re feeling frisky; it’s in your price range too. As the final Golf built in Germany before VW shifted to a more global (read: cost-conscious) product strategy, the Mk6 arguably represents the pinnacle of Volkswagen’s small-car engineering.
Thanks to the magic of depreciation, a gently used specimen can now be yours for pennies (okay, quarters) on the dollar, promising years of delightful motoring with hardly any age-related drawbacks. Continue reading
The noble R129 Mercedes-Benz SL-Class specimen pictured above, a 1998 SL500 (5.0-liter V8, 315 hp), sold for $8300 in early 2016 with 91,000 miles, a thick stack of maintenance receipts going back four years and a clean California history.
As the number of well-kept R129s dwindles, and savvy car-shoppers realize how much craftsmanship went into these cars, there’s nowhere for the prices to go but up. Here’s the Klipnik Practical Buying Guide for this thus-far overlooked generation of Benz’s iconic luxury roadster.
You know what kind of used car you want, but that’s just the beginning. Now you have to search through hundreds or even thousands of classified ads, cross your fingers and hope you pick the right one.
Except there’s a better way.
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