1997 Pontiac Sunfire

The second car I had was a 1997 Pontiac Sunfire SE coupe.  It came with a 3 speed automatic transmission, 2.2L four cylinder engine good for 120 hp.  Options included AM/FM cassette player, A/C and driver AND passenger mirror! Ok, the mirrors were standard but it seemed cool after my Cav didn't have one.  

This was the first new car I bought.  I traded in the '87 Cav with 117000 miles on it, it was in rough shape as far as maintenence.  It needed brakes, tires, front shocks, and a tune up.  The cost of those things was far above the resale value of the car so I decided to take the plunge and go for a new car that I could drive into the ground.  The bonus of this was that I wouldn't have to worry about reliability and I could focus on college at the time.  This was especially important because I was a commuter student and if I didn't have wheels, I didn't take the tests.  

I balanced the pros and cons and took the plunge.  I really did like that car.  It handled well and that 2.2L was kind of torquey for what it was.  It only weighed around 2600 lbs. and that power to weight ratio seemed to work well (I didn't understand the concept of power to weight ratio at that time).  Reliability was very good.  I didn't have to take it in for anything, and it certainly got me to where I needed to go.  I think I was putting on around 18000 miles per year when I had that thing.  

The 3 speed auto was interesting.  The gear ratios were very long  due to there only being three of them and it did fine on the freeway.  I think I got in the upper 20's for mpg fuel efficiency.  I didn't usually calculate this statistic back then but I remember it did well.  I remember a kid in an early 90's Geo Storm pulling up next to me wanting to race one night.   I buried the pedal and made sure he didn't pull ahead.  I noticed he kept losing ground every time he shifted, which made me understand that if you have enough power going through a long gear then you don't lose the acceleration time shifting.  Not that a 120hp car is a racer or anything but in that situation it was relevant.

Here's the hard part about the Sunfire.  My insurance agent at the time was very good at pummeling me with high insurance rates.  I was paying about 133 per month on that car which is very high.  Granted I was like 20 at the time but still, there were better things I could be spending my money on.  The other challenge was that I was paying ahead on my car payments to make sure the value of the car was higher than the amount owed on the loan.  I didn't want to be upside down (the current term for that).  I think the payments were something like 215 per month and I would usually pay 230-250 per month, whatever my finances would allow.  I found out that I could only stay even with the trade in value though.  I wanted to make sure that if I did have a financial crisis that I'd at least have an out by trading my car and not have to turn over a big sack of money to go with it.  

I learned some valuable lessons with this.  First, shop around for insurance.  Even if you don't find a better deal you know what the competition is and where they stand.  I'll have another story about insurance in a future blog but for now I can share that I did not successfully negotiate much lower of a rate.  My agent told me there would be a drastic reduction in my rates when I turned 21 and I guess he thought 25 dollars annually was huge.  I have a different concept I guess.  The other lesson I learned is that new cars have a steep depreciation in the first few years.  If you look at any Consumer Reports buying guide they have statistics per car what to expect your loss to be.  A safe stat would be 30% in 3 years.  Some cars are as high as 45%.  Others if you are fortunate enough get popular in Fast and Furious movies and the value never really drops (ala Toyota Supra).  

I did wind up getting rid of the car.  My mom was in the market for a new car as her '95 Saturn was getting kind up there in miles.  She wound up buying it off of me for the remaining trade in value and I was able to factor in her car as part of the deal.  My lesson is that I don't need to buy a new car.  The steep depreciation makes the cost of a car higher and if you're willing to take 20000 miles already on a car then you can get a higher quality car for the same price.  This doesn't work for all people and sometimes you can get a KILLER deal on a closed out new car.  Every situation is different.  I learned that insurance rates are negotiable and new cars are not for me.  But I really did like the red Sunfire.  So did the cheerleader my sister knew back then.  I did get some attention with it which is another story though :)