vB Easy Archive - New high-mile tires for high-mile car

Pages: 1

New high-mile tires for high-mile car
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: GJSNeptune

My girlfriend got four new tires on her car. They're Goodyear Assurance (I think), rated for 80k miles and have high ratings in all categories. They were about $99/tire. I'm not a car person myself, so I didn't foresee the problem at first, not until I talked about it with my brother. She already has 160k miles on her car, so she obviously won't see the end of the new tires. She plans to get a new car sometime next year, and my brother said the new tires won't affect trade-in value.

What are some options for when she gets a new car? Take the hit and offer it as trade-in? Get a new car from a dealership while trying to sell her car privately and pad the price a bit to cover the tires? Get four cheap tires put on beforehand and keep the current ones for the new car?

Posted by: ckamc

Yeah she is going to take a rather steep hit if she was to trade it in, unless the dealer REALLY wants to make a sale.

Have you checked the value on KBB?

Posted by: GJSNeptune

I did a quick KBB estimate and got a private seller value of around $2500. I'm not sure if I got all the options included. Most of them at least. It's a '98 Saturn SL2.

Posted by: Bonka

Tires are a wear item so don't expect to recuperate the expense when it comes time to sell.

I would shop around a few dealerships to compare trade-in values. You will likely get more selling privately. You could get some junk tires put on and save the new ones but the new car would have to use the same (or similar size) tire. Those tires are your standard passenger tire anyways I would leave them on as it is.

Posted by: canddmeyer

If you love your girlfriend as much as I love my wife you'll want her in a vehicle with the best tires available. Forget about the cost and forget about selling the vehicle. As long as she's driving it, rest assured you'll be condfident she doesn't have some Continental blow-pops under the vehicle.

When the time comes to replace the vehicle, the tires go with it. This is already a done deal, so why sweat it? Consider buying the vehicle yourself if it's in good condition and you have a place to park it. It's great to have a second vehicle to fall back on when the need arises. It hardly increases the insurance at all as you can't be driving both at the same time. As easy as Saturn's are to steal, expensive tires would be the least of my worries.