2005 Ford Mustang GT - The Beginning of a Beautiful Relationship

Buying an older car can be risky; especially buying an old sports car in the middle of winter in northern Ohio. Hopefully, with enough foresight, you can mitigate any potential problems. Well, any problems that you should or could be made aware of.

My wife and I weren't in the market for anything "new" per se, I'm seemingly always looking, but due to "cookies", when this little beauty popped up on my Facebook wall a couple of weeks ago I fell madly in love with it. No surprise, 2005-2008 Mustang GT's are the rare "modern" car that's on "my list". Much to my surprise and delight, my wife went nuts for it as well.

At fourteen this pony is no foal but she has just under 43,000 miles on her, I found it to be priced "correctly" and rides and drives like new. That's great but you have to take emotion out of any purchase like this and that's easier said than done on something as emotional as this. If I was to pull the trigger on the purchase, I had some stipulations. I wanted some cash knocked off the price, a thirty-day warranty, and gap insurance. Perhaps I was doing my best to kill the deal, after all, we don't need a sixth car, but doing my best, again, to mitigate risk, I didn't feel as though my asks were unreasonable.

They knocked $700 off the asking price without me blinking. Seeing that my sales person said the dealership doesn't haggle on price, she claimed to be amazed her almighty sales manager did that. Hmm, okay. I wasn't born yesterday and this certainly isn't my first car purchase rodeo but still, the gesture was nice. Besides, old cars like this on dealer lots are albatrosses. Banks don't like to loan money for them and finding cash buyers is hard regardless of the time of year but especially in winter. The warranty was a sticking point, though.

At first, my sales person said that although all of their used cars that don't have any balance from a factory warranty are sold "as is", they all come with a thirty-day warranty. Then she waffled and said that wouldn't apply on a car as old as this. Well, shoot. I told her that would be a deal breaker; I didn't feel comfortable buying a car this old without any protection. My brilliant, evil plan was to take the thing to a mechanic after I bought it and for just $53, they'd do a top to bottom diagnostic on it for me. They find anything wrong with the car the dealership would cover it.

She called me back the next day and said they'd make an exception and gave me thirty days. Now we were really getting somewhere. Good thing we really like the car.

Gap insurance? Well, that was a longer putt. Gap insurance protects you in the event your car is totaled and there's a "gap" between the car's book value and what your insurance company will write you a check for.  For instance, you pay, $10,000 cash for a car and a tree falls on it within a week of the purchase - if your insurance company will only pay out $6,500, that's a $3,500 punch in the face. With gap insurance, you don't have to worry about a gap.

The banks the dealership works with don't offer gap insurance but I found that if I financed the car through my insurance agency, gap insurance is included. What's more, because the car is so old, the banks the dealerships work with would only give me a loan at between 8-12%; the lower rate dependent on credit rating. State Farm got me a 36-month loan at 7.1%. Yes, that's high for a used car loan but reasonable considering the age of the car. Besides, we're only financing about $11,000 so the interest payments are fairly digestible.

So, we have a 2005 Ford Mustang GT that's in practically showroom condition that I paid relatively little for that has a warranty, albeit brief, covering repairs and gap insurance. I've got my fingers and toes crossed but this looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship.