1999 Chevy Lumina w/60k original miles for $1,800...would you buy?

I'd pass on the car but I do like the suggestion of taking your neighbor for breakfast though. She would probably really enjoy the company.
 
Those years had that plastic intake that would crack and dump coolant into the engine ruining it.

Had one 98 Buick blow that way and GM wouldn’t honor the recall
But an easy fix and it was TSB with a refund if you had the gasket/intake replaced. It was two issues EGR stove pipe melting the intake and the gaskets coupled with poor maintenance and Dex Cool. If you can turn a wrench it is a 3 hour fix on a 3800 , a little more on the supercharged engine. Supercharged engine did not suffer the EGR stove pipe issue. (all metal intake) I have owned 5 3800 powered cars. First thing I do is change the intake gaskets and update the intake if it has not been done already. I have not had one go less then 210,000 miles after that with little to no issue. Biggest thing with the car the OP mentioned in my experience of ownership is he will have to do the intake/intake gasket and valve cover gaskets. The sitting is not really going to affect the rest of the gaskets too bad on these. Case in point my good friend has 2001 GTP he purchased 3 years ago with 32,000 miles on it. We did valve cover gaskets, intake gasket and swaped all the fluids, He just rolled 82,000 and we have done nothing else. For 1800 bucks? Swap the fluids, do the intake stuff, do a trans-go shift kit and drive it until it rots away or you can't get parts.
 
I have a little wrench time on a couple of these. I found them reasonable to work on with known gm designs and reliable under normal use. Good to ride in, comfortable cabins, though maybe not as space efficient as a foreign equivalent. I remember them getting stellar crash ratings for the time as well.
 
If it runs and drives, I'd buy it for that price
Look at it this way, I just spent
$1430 for 281k
You want to spend
$1800 for 60k

You could tinker with it, clean it up, and sell it for $2k to $3k in this market
 
$1800 would have been an absolute steal and I'd have immediately put it to inspection and bought it if it was in good or better condition. New that car cost about $24,000 or more. Adjusted for official inflation, today that equivalent car would be about $43,000. At $1800, that's about 5% of the car's original cost adjusted for inflation and probably 1/8th the cost of a similar "new" more modern low miles used car. You'd be getting a near "new" old car at 1/20th the new price. While there have been advances in safety, handling, technology, those are not that significant to warranty a 95% increase in costs. That's not even the tax on a new car, and only a few months car payments on anything new-ish made since 2010. You'd get low insurance, low ownership costs, on a generally good car.

We can debate whether it's a good car or not, and I suspect it's a very serviceable basic car by modern standards. It gets 4.5 out of 5 stars on Edmunds and 4.3/5 on cars.com, and gets good or acceptable safety ratings. Great for the role of a reliable relatively safe comfortable commuter.

The son was right to not let his mom sell something so inexpensively, and $4-5k is the "fair market value" for that car right now.
 
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Why is everybody commenting about the market? The chip shortage and lack of new cars is only raising the prices of later model used vehicles. People shopping for a 2016 or 2018 model wont be looking at a 1999. The amount of price inflation on older cars is minimal. A clean 23 year old 60,000 mile car that sells for $1800 would have sold for $1800 five years ago just as well. I have at least that much in my 95 Buick Skylark with twice the miles and expect to get a good bit more for it.
Our locale prices have doubled for a running car. This $1800 car would be around $3500.
 
You mean, in 1999 it got good ratings.

Well since it's not a time-traveling car, yes, when it was new and tested it got good ratings. Is it inherently less safe today? Probably not. Are there better options one could chase? Yes, no doubt. Plan to spend 20, 30, 50x as much for a new car (based on the prior $1800 price, not the adjusted $5000 price). We could play the "spend more money to be safe" game all day long. And in every life category.

If safety was paramount, people could wear racing helmets and padded suits while driving. Or just hire someone to drive everywhere so you can stay home.
 
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It probably is a bit less safe today, than when it was sold, various rubber bits have aged after all. I just wanted to make sure it was understood that it would rate as 0 out of 5 stars today--we might argue that some of the latest & greatest isn't needed, but end of the day, it doesn't hold a candle. It might not hold a candle to a car 10 years newer.

[FWIW I've gone back to driving my '99. I accept the tradeoff, but would rather drive newer if given the choice.]
 
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