Should I buy a $500 PT Cruiser....

Hi Guys,
Just wondering if I might be making a mistake here. So, my wife's sister has a 2008 PT Cruiser that I've done some maintenance items on within the past year. The car has definitely seen better days (mechanically). Body/paint are in decent shape. She doesn't really have a lot of extra cash, so it's been kept up with the minimum required. Here are the positives....within the past year it has new brakes (rotors and pads on front) and new shoes/drums in the rear. Spark Plugs were changed along with wires. 2 new tires and the timing belt was just done. The bad - The check engine light is on (no idea of code), needs alignment, no ac (leak in one of the lines according to her). There could very well be more issues, this is all I know about at the moment. Tags have recently expired and it will need emissions test (won't pass as long as the check engine light is on). She finally gave up on it and bought a Ford Escape. I was thinking of purchasing the car from her and fixing it up to have on hand as a spare vehicle in case either me, my wife, or our kids need it in a pinch. I don't expect the car to be reliable to take out of state or long trips, but around town or if needed a spare vehicle can always come in handy. I believe the car has about 160K miles on it currently. Does this sound like a disaster waiting to happen?....should I walk away from it or does $500 and some spare time to fix it up make for a cheap good spare car?

 

For 500 bucks I don’t think u can go wrong.

 

RUNNNNN!!!!

 

I thought it's worth a shot. If there are too many problems or it looks like a money pit I could probably sell it and break even.

 

Can you put long travel and 38's on it?

 

Might be worth it depending on what it takes to solve the engine light issue. Would be a nice beater if you can fix it cheap

 

Let's start a fund to buy the car so we can toss it into the dump where it belongs. Maybe take it to burning man and light it on fire?

 

That's what I'm thinking. She took it to Autozone a couple months ago to scan the code and told her it was the spark plugs. I replaced those for her - the plugs I removed looked like they've been in there for quite some time. She said the light never went off. Likely another problem, but it hasn't been scanned since. I'll be picking the car up this weekend and start digging into it. I figure if I can throw a few hundred into it and keep it for a spare for the family I'd he happy. The ac issue is just a line that needs replacing according to a mechanic she went to. The ac line is only about $50 and nothing is blocking it which should make replacing it quite easy.

 

You should buy it and run it over with your tundra.

 

Depends if you're willing to lose a couple hundred bucks. Buy for $500, put $200 in trying to fix issues.

If it doesn't work take the time to part it out, try to sell and yet your $500 back, or scrap it for $250 (it that's what a scrap vehicle will get you here)

 

PT cruiser =

Tell her to take it to Carmax. They prob would give her more than 500 for it

 

Go for it, it’s only $500! Disconnect the negative terminal for 20 mins and see if the light comes back on.

 

Agree. I'd never go out of my way to by a PT Cruiser, but thought for $500 bucks what the hell. If I can repair the issues myself relatively cheap and get a spare car out it maybe worth looking into. Or maybe just fix it and sell it to make a few bucks.

 

https://amp.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/22k59y/pt_cruiser_owners_what_tragedy_burdened_you_with/

 

If someone gave me $5000 to put that in my driveway for a week, I would refuse.

 

I could buy a really nice suspension for the tundra with $5k; sign me up...

 

https://youtu.be/GfDaSlECzug

 

Srt4 motor swap

 

Can you drop a V8 in there?

 

Do you remember they used to sell them brand new, Buy one, get one for a dollar

 

What does the 'PT' stand for?
Potential Trouble..?
Probably Terminal..?
Prehistoric Technology..?
Paranoid Toddlers..?

 

Save your time and money.

 

$500 is a lot of über rides if you have multiple vehicles down and need a ride somewhere. its probably not worth keeping a spare vehicle around for stuff like that. Idk what it's like where you live but here in CT I'd have to pay yearly "property" tax on it, registration and insurance, blah blah and so on. Not worth it IMO. I tried figuring out what it would cost me for a daily driver to save on gas and I think I came up with like 7 years to pay off IF I got a DD for $5k.

 

I was just thinking if a few hundred would fix the issues it wouldn't be a bad deal. I've got the Tundra and my wife drives a 2015 Armada. Our kids have cars, but something could always happen with those. One is a 1998 Mercury Tracer (was my grandmothers car), very clean inside, but clear coat is peeling moderately on the outside. Mechanically it's sound just turning 100K miles last month. The other is a 2004 Toyota Corolla I bought from my bosses wife who had it since new. I picked that up about 5 years ago for $4K with 137K miles on it...it's now nearing 200K. I know one day their cars will have issues that start to arise and it would be handy to have a spare on hand for anyone to use in a pinch. Liability only insurance would run ~$50 a month, tags about $50 or so for the year.

 

Also known as child abuse.

 

From the limited research i did awhile back, the pt cruiser was a red flag car.

Unless you think you can resell it for a profit, id pass.

 

Damn that's cheap to own a car. Idk how much liability only would cost me but not counting insurance....just registration and property tax, my tundra costs me about $150 a month to own, not drive, just own. Throw in insurance, gas, maintenance, and car payment, ugh I don't even wanna think about it, talk about a lot of uber rides lol.