response 1 of 40:

Mar 31 03:21 UTC 2003

My background: I know very little about cars.  Generally speaking, I 
want it to go forward and stop, and I like good gas mileage.  I'm just 
not a car buff.

Usually I buy cars only when desperate to replace my existing car.  
Just now I've got a reliable 1992 Ford Taurus -- I bought it from 
tpryan -- and it shows no signs of not fulfilling my needs.  However, 
maybe it's time I grow up a bit and start planning for things, instead 
of reacting to disasters.

So, many of my questions have to do with, how do you decide what kind 
of car to buy?  There's me, and my 6 year old son.  No one else much 
rides in my car.

It seems to be impossible to buy a car without passenger airbags if 
it's much newer than my Taurus, but I'm against the idea of 
buying "safety" devices from which I have to protect people, 
particularly him.  A passenger airbag is a deadly threat to John.  I 
really doubt there's anything I can do about it, but can someone tell 
me when they started installing these dangerous devices in all cars?

Other than that, when I need another car, I'll want good gas mileage, 
reliability, and enough room for two people to use the vehicle to go 
on a week long vacation.  I don't want a truck, SUV, or any sort of 
van.  John prefers four doors to two; I'm not guaranteeing to him that 
our next car will have four doors though.

My biggest problem, reading the list of classified ads, is that in 
most cases, I don't know what the different cars are like.  I don't 
know what they look like, what to expect from them, or how much they 
are worth.  I know how to use www.consumerreports.com and www.kbb.com 
so I can find out about a specific car, but as for browsing the list 
of cars in the paper, I see lots of unfamiliar names in there.  I 
cannot tell, upon seeing an ad anywhere, if the car is worth my 
attention for the price being asked.  I have to look up every single 
one.

response 3 of 40:

Mar 31 04:19 UTC 2003

Cars made in the last couple of years that do not have a back seat have
airbag disable switches.  If the car has a back seat, current thinking
is that young children should be there instead of the front, anyway,
because they're at substantially less risk of injury.

I'm not sure when passenger side airbags became common.  They were
optional, for a while.  My guess is you'd have to go back before 1995,
maybe even earlier.  It depends partly on whether you're looking at cars
or light trucks, since airbags came relatively late to trucks.

response 5 of 40:

Mar 31 06:03 UTC 2003

I've bought two used cars in the past year. The first one was totaled by
an out-of-control semi, which led to the second one.

The absolute criterion for the used car(s) was that it was a station wagon
(but not a light truck), had a manual transmission, had 4WD or AWD (and
had air bags and ABS, for safety). This reduced the eligible cars that we
never looked at the used car ads in the papers, but used the web to set
the criterion search. The choice came down to Subarus. From there, it was
pretty easy to find all the used Subarus listed on the web within 200
miles. We ended up buying both of them from a dealer in Ferndale.