I am fixin' (yes I live in TX) to buy a Sebring. good price on a 2006 with low miles. Better fuel milage that the big arse truck I just totaled in a wreck. Anybody had one? If sdo what you think?
Got a 70 mile round trip each day for work looking for something with better milage but not a whimp car (I got to drive it everywhere). This is a converible and have always wanted one. EPA ratings says 26 hyway milage. Seen a couple things on the net that say its closer to 29. much better than the 16 and deisel I was getting.
23K milage and it came from a rental agency. They have pretty strict standards when it comes to maintenance. Used to work for the agency I am buying it from.
One other plus is I'm getting the car for about what the totaled out value of my truck was (truck was paid off). The only extra I will have to pay for is the extended warranty if I purchase it. About a grand to extend it out to 70k miles.
You could think of government workers like teenagers. You pay them an allowance, but do you get any work out them? They eat the food, put their feet on the furniture and complain loudly whenever they are unhappy.
I realize you may be geeked for the Sebring, but don't buy a Chrysler. I worked in the industry closely with DCX, and no Dodge/Chrysler is worth owning. Don't do anything with them other than a low mileage lease.
Trust me.
Any money you may save on the up front purchase price is due to the low resell value of them. And you'll be spending $1k+ in repair bills soon enough every six months. For the AC compressor. For the water pump. etc. don't buy it.
Pony up the extra money to get a reliable car; it'll save you money in the end.
edit: and the fact that it was a rental is even worse.
I realize you may be geeked for the Sebring, but don't buy a Chrysler. I worked in the industry closely with DCX, and no Dodge/Chrysler is worth owning. Don't do anything with them other than a low mileage lease.
Trust me.
Any money you may save on the up front purchase price is due to the low resell value of them. And you'll be spending $1k+ in repair bills soon enough every six months. For the AC compressor. For the water pump. etc. don't buy it.
Pony up the extra money to get a reliable car; it'll save you money in the end.
edit: and the fact that it was a rental is even worse.
interesting, my wife and her mother both own sebrings and combined they've had oh... ZERO repairs in the last decade on them besides oil changes... so I guess they lucked out. My wife gets closer to 28-30 MPG on it.
although, i have a cirrus that I got for free as a work car... it has had problems galore... I've never had to make any repairs at a repair shop... they are issues I can live with or fix myself...
my wife's sebring... model of a quality car so far. bought it in January 2004 and have never, not even once, had a repair on it.
I think this is true of most car types though. You will have your success stories and your lemons. I just know two sebrings that have been perfect cars. Our cars go through MN winters, which is ridiculously bad on automobiles... and they have been great.
about the rental car aspect, every car until this last one for me has been a rental car. It's all I ever buy (except out current two good cars). I've never had a problem with a rental car purchase.
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Scott I think your advice is well intended, but I'm another example of how that's not necessarily the case. I bought a used Stratus a few years ago that had been a rental. It had 30k miles when we bought it. We got the extended warranty like we should, but the bottom line is, 60k miles later, it's still running fine. There are glitches, like the power locks don't work so well and the A/C only works when the fan is on high (anyone know what that problem could be? ) but overall it's been a good car. I even let the oil go 4-6 weeks past due several times before changing it, and it's still running just fine. In fact, the drive is pretty smooth with that cab-forward design and wide wheel base.
I'd prefer to have a Camry, which was the car I had before this one, but as cheap as it was this car was a good deal, and maintenance has been really light.
knapplc wrote: the A/C only works when the fan is on high (anyone know what that problem could be? )
I fought with that as well. After spending $1000 to get the A/C fixed in my Ram they didn't hook stuff back up correctly and it had constant problems with the A/C shutting down when accelerating, it wouldn't switch between floor/dash/windshild vents, etc. Every time I took it back to the '4-star' quality dodge shop to have them fix their work it just came back with more and more problems since they had to tear the dash apart each time. In the end, the cup holder wouldn't slide in/out any more, the gear indicator on the dash didn't line up with what gear I was actually in, and the wiring going to the stereo cooked itself. Other chronic problems included the headlights would only work when the steering wheel was fully raised into a bus-type position (which had to be fixed 3 separate times), the bearings on the front axle would go out every 30k or so miles, the oxygen sensors chronically malfunctioned so it would periodically run like it had a bunch of water in the fuel tank and stall out when driving, the alternator/battery shorted out the cables connecting them on several occasions... I could go on and on. And every repair was $500-$1000+ each time. In the end, when gas hit $3+/gallon and it broke down twice in one week, I decided that having a car that was paid for was costing me more than buying a new car. I had a Daytona when I was younger that was similarly bad.
I also feel the same way about Pontiac and Ford (owned both, so speaking from some experience). I guess I've just had very bad luck with big-3 automobiles, and good luck with foreign makes.
knapplc wrote: There are glitches, like the power locks don't work so well and the A/C only works when the fan is on high (anyone know what that problem could be?
Blower Fan Resistor needs to be replaced. Part will cost you between $25 and $45 and the labor will set you back at least $150 if it is where they put them on a Pontiac Grand Prix. Google the fix(replace blower fan resistor dodge stratus) and see if you can do it yourself.
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by houstonherdfan » Tue Jul 22, 2008 9:51 pm 
Go for it, dude.
) but overall it's been a good car. I even let the oil go 4-6 weeks past due several times before changing it, and it's still running just fine. In fact, the drive is pretty smooth with that cab-forward design and wide wheel base. 
