[Cheap Guy]

So I was looking for a winter beater car and ran across what I thought was a great deal on a 2000 Acura TL. It was a non-Michigan car so no rust and it was owned by an older gentleman who took it to the dealership for service. It has 71k miles and no major issues except the paint was beat to death and same for the dash which was sun faded but it rode great.

So I buy the thing for $2,500 and cleaned it up and got a cheap paint job and wheels on it. Later I find out Hondas are apparently notorious for bad transmissions, the paint is notorious for fading and the timing belt change isn’t a simple process and needs to be done at 100k miles or sooner or the engine will be toast if it breaks.

So where is the supposed great reliability of Japanese cars? This thing is like a ticking time bomb to me right now with the trans and timing belt concerns. People keep saying it will run for 200,000 miles or more but so will many American cars with no trans or timing belt issues, and if an American car goes bad it’s usually much cheaper to fix based on friends who own foreign cars.

Right now I’d take a GM car with a 3800 or a even a Ford Fusion with the 3.0 V6 over most older foreign cars as a beater or daily driver but every one keeps saying what a great car the Acura is.

Here’s a few before and after pics.