I’m actually pretty clueless about buying and selling cars. I hate it, which probably explains why I keep them so long. And I never troll craigslist or Ebay. And folks write me e-mails asking me what their car is worth. Beats me. I think some of them assume I’m trying to sell cars at CC. I just daydream about them, and write it down. So all these great conversations and comments about beaters have me wondering, what is the price cut-off to qualify as a beater? Under a $1000? If so, does this qualify?
If it runs and drives (check that transmission) or could be made to run and drive for less than $500 on top of the $975…yeah, I’d say it qualifies as a beater.
151,500 miles? It still has life.
That LHS for $1,000 is a beater. I had a 1995 and it was the nicest POS that I ever drove. I dumped my after 85,000 miles and 5 years of unreliability. I bought it off lease in 1997 with 28,000 on the odometer. Replaced the transmission at 59,000 and again at 75,000. Water pump failed, it overheated and cooked off the oil at least once every couple of months (mechanic couldn’t figure it out), Starter started making funny noises but never with a mechanic present. When my wife got a new minivan in 2002, I sold the LHS to Carmax and never looked back. I swallowed my pride and drove her 1993 Nissan Quest with around 120,000 on the odometer – still have it as a teenager’s car now with 250,000 miles and running strong.
But man that LHS had a nice interior and ride! I would be tempted to try one at $1,000 as a kid’s car.
This is the last word on a thousand dollar car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXoHz2leofw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
So true. I played this song for my young brother in law to try to explain to him why the rusted, beat, fart-mufflered, POS Jetta he wanted to buy for $1000 was not the deal he thought it was. He ignored me, my wife said I was a jerk for being negative, but $3000 in and it still has only run for 2 weeks of the last 6 months!
Here’s a clearer rendition of this song by the Bottle Rockets….
http://youtu.be/nZdC5ggYbwc
This is how I personally used to calculate a “good beater price”.
Monthly bus fare to get to work: $210 (I commute)
Junkyard pay for wrecks: $300
Good beater price: $500
That makes the vehicle cost me about a months worth of bus fare. If it blows up I always get the 300 back. And if the car lasts longer than that ( 1 month), I’ve saved money. The gas cost I consider as the price for comfort, not having to stand outside in the snowy winther waiting for a bus that might be delayed.
Plus even when using the bus, I still needed to have a car to go get groceries etc. So insurance I had to pay no matter what. Having a better other car made this easy to do.
I am always impressed at the number of once expensive cars that are available at pennies of their original price, this car is a good example of that, the LHS’s were around $30K new, and now you can get one for under a grand. Oldsmobile Auroras are another great example of this as well, a $33K car in 95 is now a $1000 or less car.
My favorite is seeing 600SEL sedans from the early 90’s going for like $3500 when they were $125K cars when new.
The Aurora is kind of a fresh pit of hell, so that’s why they’re cheap. I see them all the time cheaper than Cutlass Cieras here.
Funny how a $14K “Value Edition” Cutlass Ciera can still fetch $1,500-$2000 here in the Bay Area but the Aurora is always “The engine work is gonna cost more than it’s worth.”
Of course they are, but they are nice cars, a decent one, if you take your time and find a nice one, would make a nice driver until some sort of catastrophe takes it out, but if your into cars and have a little extra cash, you could drive a couple of interesting cars a year.
Having worked at as service adviser for both Chrysler and GM, I would take the LHS over an Aurora any day.
While both cars are junk, the Aurora is even worse junk than the LHS. At least the LHS had a nice, non-Rubbermaid interior.
I’ll disagree, I took more than a couple of LHS’s and Concordes and what not on trade, the interior of an Aurora is heads and shoulders above any Chrysler interior of that era.
The Aurora used slightly better materials inside, with more soft plastics on the dash and door panels. However, Chrysler interior design and switchgear quality from this era were leaps and bounds ahead of the disjointed mess inside the Aurora and other GM products.
I’m with Rob on this one.
Those 20 year old SELs will cost a lot more than $3500 to keep running.
Yes, I know, but if your into cars, and I have always wanted to at least own a 12 cylinder car once, it would be cool to own, drive it around pretending you’re a crooked South African ambassador/Armenian crime lord for a year and dump it.
It could also make a good Lemons Racer if you sold enough stuff on Craigs, Flea-Bay etc to get the cost basis down to $500.
I got a contact high just reading this!
Very true. I bought my ’97 Volvo 850 for $2500 with only 69k on the odo….these sold new for $35k. This is why I love beaters.
I girl I work with asked me to take a quick look at a 1996 Aurora that someone she knew had for sale for like, $1100. It’s rusty and has over 200k. I did a NADA on it at work (that’s what we used to calculate loan values for cars), and I saw something I had never seen before, the “rough” and “average” values were negative numbers!!!
Such a shame, the Aurora had such potential…
Oh, so far I think I have her talked out of it.
Carmine, I’m with you… I guess I’m really “getting to be more and more like my Dad” (who’s only 3 months gone, now), but your brain works sort-of like mine. I think all things are “relative”. I see a still decent looking car like the ’97 LHS, above, for a few hundred dollars, and I think, “Now that would make someone who would ‘value’ it’s relatively good looking exterior a good rig!!”, particularly assuming it’s still relatively sound underneath. I’ve gotten to a place where I MORE than value a car that’s still handsome and runs well and has only honest wear on it. I have a ’99 LHS (it’s the “next” and last version of the LHS’s, and still one of the best looking cars they’ve built in years… much better looking than the cartoonish Gotham City looking things they’ve built in later years), and I value it, highly. And you’re right… mine was a $30K+ rig, when new. Appreciated your comments, above, and wanted to “weigh in”…
A friend of mine who is a professional mechanic said that it took him 8-hours to change the battery on his LHS. Around here mechanics are charging $96/hr. So labor comes out to $768.00. Add a decent quality battery for $85 and you’re up to $853.00. Your beater has now set you back $1828.
Why? I’ve never had it take more than 8 minutes to replace a battery. Where’s the LHS keep its?
If it’s anything like my late mother-in-laws Stratus, it’s buried down behind the wheel and is a giant PITA to get to what with removing the wheel and the wheelwell shield and the panel behind that, plus she had to replace the positive and negative cables. WHO THE FOOK puts a battery there on a car unless it’s Porche? AND WHY?
Stay awat from Mopar’s cloud cars. Total sh*t. I’m certain the damned things been melted down for a chinese refrigerator door by now.
And don’t forget, these things were in C/Ds 10 best lists for two years in a row in ’96 and ’97!
Changing the battery on my ’99 JXi ‘vert was not much harder than changing a tire. I had an awesome trooper of a car for $250.
Whoops, ’97
I’m going to have to call BS on this. Unless your mechanic has no arms.
I’d have to call BS because a true professional mechanic wouldn’t own an LHS. The fact that battery replacement is a long involved process is just one of the reasons.
Depending on the exact version it involves removing the air cleaner assembly. inner fender liner/splash shield and unless you really like working in tight spaces the front tire too. It can be a 1 hour job unless some of those fasteners holding the fender liner are corroded which can easily add that much more time.
I’m gonna have to call BS on your BS call. A professional mechanic would almost certainly own an LHS. Probably not for long, though.
Every mechanic I’ve worked for/with was more than happy to snap up cars that their owners couldn’t afford to fix. Beat scrap price by a few hundred bucks, throw in whatever “at cost” parts are necessary to run it for a few months, then scrap it anyway. Sell it off if it continues to run.
However, I WILL concur with the BS call on the battery. While an LHS is not a super simple battery swap, it isn’t hard. It helps to have a single post chassis lift, but hey, any professional mechanic would have that. Sebrings are worse!
I’ve obtained a number of cars that way but when I’m done fixing what ever it needs, possibly driving it for awhile I want to make more than I would have repairing the car for all my troubles. Since when it was time to sell it is a very good possibility that I would sell it to a customer that means I wouldn’t sell a car that I would tell a customer to not to buy and thus would only take a LH to send to China to become a toaster or microwave.
Either way you cut it 8 hours is waaaay to much even for the stupid Chryslers that they forgot to engineer a proper spot for the battery to reside.
I doubt 8 hours, but Chrysler batteries are a huge pain. My housemate bought a Sebring convertible a a crazy low price because it needed accessory belts and a battery. I thought “hey, twenty minutes of work and we’ve got a half-price car!”
The belts were a three person job that required special tools, and the battery was a two person job that required removal of a brake disc for the fender mounted battery to clear, if I remember correctly.
Huge pain to work on, but its been brilliantly reliable, and its a comfy car.
A battery replacement on an LHS is 1.2 hours, because it requires the removal of the left front wheel to do it. The act of finessing the old one out and the new one in means it is a money losing job.
No way it is eight hours, speaking as someone who sold many of said job.
I can see someone who isn’t familiar with the LHS (or cloud cars) taking more and more stuff off in an attempt to weasel it out the top like a real car, adding a lot of needless time to the job before realizing it comes out the wheel well and it’s best done with the wheel off.
It has to be the worst placement of a battery ever, even a relatively minor fender bender can smash the battery leaving the car un-driveable and the leaking battery darn near un-extractable.
1.2 hours is either 1.0 or 1.1 hours too long for a battery swap. Whoever came up with that design is, I hope, long gone from what’s left of Chrysler.
Good God! Watching from the sidelines, the LH cars all struck me as pretty slick. But who the hell is goofy enough to bury a battery to where it takes over an hour, and tire and fender-liner removal, to take out?
Yup, they disappeared off the streets surprisingly fast. And Daimler’s dismissal of them in favor of tired RWD designs surprised me. But I guess that surprise was based in ignorance, of what a nightmare design the LH cars were.
The “new” LX cars are actually just as old as the LH cars in basic design as originally the LH was intended to by available in FWD for consumers, RWD for police and AWD for both. That is the reason for the engine and trans layout not anything to do with the Renault connection. When it was time to replace the LH they dusted off the old designs and put them into production with new sheetmetal and adapted some things to use Daimler parts rather than tool up for the RWD components which according to one engineer’s comments at Allpar.
I have a `96 LHS. The battery is under the hood, on the driver’s side. It takes all of five minutes to change. Maybe this crazy battery wormhole is true for the second generation LHS, but it is simply false for the first gen. Sometimes, you guys scare me with your misinformation.
I was gonna say. I owned a 1993 Intrepid, the battery location couldn’t have been all that different on a first generation LHS. It must definitely be a second generation thing. I liked the first gen LH’s better anyway…
No misinformation, no one said ALL LH cars had the stupid battery location though many Chrysler cars used the area inside the fender in front of the tire location for at least a few years.
Then perhaps in the future it would be wise to be more specific. Plus, look at the bright side: now you know with absolute certainty that the battery on the first-generation LHS is indeed under the hood, and it takes under ten minutes to change.
I’ve gotta tell you something is wrong with your mechanics bc I’m a 40 year old woman and I can change the battery on my LHS in 10 mins or less of course I make sure its the right size and kind of battery
Under $1K is definitely beater or project car status and in this case I’d say it’s likely both as with that many miles and that low of price I’d bet it is going to need another transmission (or engine depending on which one) soon as well as it needing front end and motor mount work. If it had any of those things done recently they would likely be asking more to try and recoup more of their losses.
Too shiny to be a beater in my book. I would call that car either a piece of crap or a good deal…but not a beater.
That was my first impression too, it’s a great-looking car. A beater should look bad enough you’ll always win any duel for a lane change or parking space.
Too bad they were so badly built, I’ve always loved the looks and layout of the LHS cars. Detroit’s last serious family car before they gave up and gave in totally to crap SUVs.
A good Beater is cheap to own and maintain, not an aging pseudo-lux car money pit.
LH cars went from ‘futuristic’ to ‘pick n pull’ in a short # of years.
Beater. If it was out here it would be rusty so beater.
Moving east to west 30 years ago showed me there are lots of other horrible-looking ways for a car to decay into beaterdom. Rust is just the fastest.
This would be a good $750 car; it it lasted you even two months, really, you are money ahead.
On an LHS of this age, there is a very small chance the a/c is working. The coil in the car is a POS and it is 16 hours to replace one. The compressor is not much better. The front ends fry very quickly due to engine heat. The transmissions on these cars were very weak. The timing belt has a habit of breaking before the replacement interval.
These cars sum-up what the great Frank Zappa said:
“All of out stuff is American made,
It’s a little bit cheesy but it’s nicely displayed.”
Chrysler sold loads of these things and there was never a second car bought, either. Most LH victims went straight to the Lexus and Acura dealers.
LOL!
“…We don’t get exited when it crumbles and breaks,
We just get on the phone and call up some flakes.”
Zappa said it like no other.
I took my friend at his word that it takes 8-hours to change the battery. Having never done this, I would have to defer to those of you who are more familiar with what the job entails as the complexity of the job sounds ridiculous to me. But Canucklehead, 16-hours to change a coil? Did you forget a decimal point?
He is referring to the evaporator for the AC and yes the quality of the Mopar evaporators and condensors from that era were quite bad and prone to corrosion leading to rapid leaks. Since the vehicles were built with pretty much the first thing going in the interior was the HVAC unit and they must be removed to be separated it means that you have remove the entire dash assembly which requires the removal of many other parts first.
However dash removal is very common to access HVAC components on many modern cars and trucks and the Chryslers aren’t the worst in that respect as much of it can be removed as an assembly.
“Chrysler sold loads of these things and there was never a second car bought, either. Most LH victims went straight to the Lexus and Acura dealers.”
That was my experience, and the end of my Mopar fanboyhood, although it was an Intrepid that done wronged me, so it was replaced not by an A or an L but a lowly used Nissan. “Lowly” is relative, of course. A second-gen Altima is homely and boring but can only be stopped by a hit-and-run from a full-size pickup. (Don’t ask how I know that.)
This guy out on 82nd (Portland’s land of shady used car lots) is spamming Craigslist with this car.
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/ctd/3124580231.html
Only asking $4888. Terrifying!
But it has those flashy chrome wheels. Never mind the zip tied on license plate, the bad color match on the door or the fact that the headlights didn’t do an acceptable job of lighting the road before they became opaque so now they probably won’t let you see far enough ahead to not out drive your headlights in the parking lot.
It’s a shame really. To me, the LHS’s were extremely beautiful cars, especially the 2nd gen ones. Every time I see one of these (or the 2nd gen Concorde), they still catch my eye.
If only Chrysler had given Tom Gale a bigger budget to work with, they could have been true masterpieces, IMHO.
I couldn’t agree more. I expected cars to look like this in The Year 2000, and these did.
Thank you for ONE vote of admiration, here… I have owned a ’99 LHS since it had only 13,900 miles on it, and it’s been a good car (now with almost 160K on it). And, it’s WAY better looking, to me, than the “Gotham City” Joker-looking rigs that replaced them in more recent years. (you know, the square, fat, chopped-top, short windowed things…) I STILL get questioned by folks who occasionally ask, “what kind of car is that?… it’s beautiful!” No kidding. Mine is champaigne gold, trimmed with black here and there, with the fancy chrome Chrysler rims. It’s still a “looker”!
There are beaters and disposable beaters. Real beaters can be fixed by anyone with a set of sockets in a WalMart parking lot, at least well enough to get home. Like a Chevy S-10 or Astro.
Disposable beaters are what my mechanic once described as beer cans – throw away when empty. I would classify this LHS as a disposable beater. None too stout to begin with, and a nightmare to fix anything on. If one runs and drives right and you can get it cheap, well OK. But just be of the mindset to enjoy it while you got it, and be listening for the first major failure, so that you can drive it to the scrap yard rather than having to pay for the tow.
Check the transmission. It will most likely have the Ultramatic 4-speed. They were not as durable as the current ones, or the previous 3-speeds. That, by itself, might be why the price is so low.
I would consider this a beater… My dad had an ’01 Intrepid (same LH-platform) a few years ago that I can’t imagine he paid more than $975 for. It looked about as shiny as this from 15 feet back, but up close it had a bunch of dings and scrapes. The original owner abused the hell out of it and it showed – interior filthy, nothing left on the brake pads, oil not changed in 15k miles, etc. I went over it and got it back into fighting shape for him: fluids, brakes, fumigate, etc. When it was new, I bet it was a hell of a car, although at ~130k it was showing it’s age and then some. The 3.2l V6 had tons of power and it handled pretty well for something it’s size. Could’ve used shocks, but that wasn’t in the budget… and it was still comfortable, regardless – in the winter anyway. In the summer, it was torture. A/C was long gone and it was black on black with a leather interior (really crappy leather, BTW – totally ruined an otherwise nice interior).
He had it for a little over two years and ~30k miles – I don’t know what happened to it exactly, but there were definitely large, metal parts in the oil pan when it stopped running. Initial investment <$1,000 + ~$200 initial maintenance + ~$400 steering rack at one point + $25 oil changes every 3-5k miles – $400 scrap value when it was done. That works out to about $700 per year or $700 per 15k miles. Would've been nice if it lasted another year or two, but at this price level you can't complain… it didn't owe him anything when it finally got hauled away on a flatbed. This LHS is probably the exact same story waiting to happen. Definite beater!
I bought my `96 LHS last January for $1600. I’ve put about 12,000 on it since, and the only time it left me stranded was due to a defective battery I had recently put it from Autozone. They of course replaced it for free. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the battery on a first-gen LHS is indeed under the hood and simple to remove. Everything works: the a/c, cruise, original CD player, sunroof, power seats, et cetera. It’s been a good, reliable car.
Same story with my “next generation” ’99 LHS… STILL a fine looking, attention getting rig. I like it. See my comments, way up above, for more detail. Appreciate that you appreciate a nice car, even if older…
As Detective Harry Hoo would say, situation presents two possibilities – beaterdom or if it is in properly nice condition apart from maintainable items, somebody might pick it up as a cruiser with a view as a future classic. It won’t be a classic for many years to come, but it won’t depreciate in the interim either.
Throw some dubs on there
Nigga please…
Yuk city! If you don’t know exactly how long it takes to change out a battery, try it yourself. Then ask an Audi owner. Not only is battery access a Chinese puzzle, you can only get a replacement battery from an Audi dealer! My doctor once had an Audi. He took it to them for a check for the state-required safety inspection and they nailed him $2800. He then bought a Subaru.
I have a 94 newyorker bought it for 1200 bux with 84k on the clock…needs ball joints but other than that its the most comfortable car I’ve ever had!!!
Heres a pic
The trunks on these lh can hold two 20 inch subs and room for amps. You no my nabors dont like me to much:)