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Hope this is the right forum to post this thread.

Looking for buying advice for a Civic in the neighborhood of $4K to $5K or so* for my 19-tear-old son.

We live in the suburbs and he is only two miles away from his job, and literally across the street from college. He really HATES things like travelling far away, so I ould be surprised if he would put more than 5K miles per year on the car.

We have been looking at Accords and it seems the best year for them (for his budget) would be the 2006 - 2007 Four-Cylander models (at least that is what we heard on the Drive Accord forum). The Accords seem REALLY hard to find around here though, which is why we are also looking at Civics, just in case one comes up for sale.

I guess some versions of Civics are as nice as Accords?

The main requirements would be (in order of importance, from most important to least important):

1) reliability,
2) low cost repair / maintenance,
3) Gas Mileage
4) low-cost insurance,
5) Coolness factor

*Just a note that we live in the SF Bay Area so EVERYTHING tends to be more expensive around here, so a $5K car in most parts of the USA will be around $6K here.

Bonus Question: Are cars with salvage titles still to be avoided at all costs?

Thanks in advance.

 
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Accord is larger and more “luxury” than a civic but a civic would be perfect for him. I’d avoid a civic from 01 to 05 as they can have head gasket issues. Should be more economical then an Accord too.

The coolest Accord is a V6 with a manual.
the coolest civic is the Si which is manual only.

Salvage can be okay if your insurance doesn’t care and you are paying cash. If the repairs are done correctly and the car is checked out.

 
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Thanks so much for the reply. Ok, we will start looking at Civics, too.

Thanks again!

 
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Since your son is only driving a couple miles to work and back then a 2009+ Civic is perfect since they finally fixed those cracked block issues by then. You should run a vin check https://carfast.express/en/cars/check though just to make sure the title isn't a mess before you hand over any cash. These cars are dead reliable and won't cost much to insure either.