Last year my grandmother passed a 1994 Astro Van down to me that had 186,000 miles on it around the time of her passing away. The van has cost me $3,000 in repairs, the van is only worth $1,800 in excellent condition. Heck the van would've have cost me a lot more than $3,000 if I didn't have a good friend/ shade-tree mechanic do all my work. He only charges $30 an hour, doesn't do unneeded work and lowers the price if its a big job.
Would I get rid of the van, hell no. That van has been in the family since March of 1994. Plus became an extremely reliable vehicle once I fixed the kinks. Plus I love old Astro vans because they are built more like a truck than a van. In fact most of the vans issues were because the van wasn't taken care of prior to having it handed down, plus typical wear and tear issues. In 19 years the only time the van left someone stranded was when the original fuel pump went out last year.
Now the Grand Prix on the other hand has no excuse for being the money pit it has became. For one I paid $4,000 for the car, for two I bought it with only 143,000 Miles. Plus the car is a lot newer than the van as well, even using OBCII computer system instead of OBCI. When I bought the car it had a bad transmission, bent axle, bad ball joint, bad inner tie rod ends, mismatched and bad spark plugs, bad tires, broken fog light assembly, faulty thermostat and now very possibly a bad wheel hub.
I haven't even put 2 K miles on it since February. That isn't even an oil change cycle. At least the dealer did take care of the tranny, axle and tie rod ends under warranty. All but the fog light assembly and the possible wheel hub were bad when I purchased out. The dealer even said the faulty thermostat and ball joint wasn't an issue. The person I live with won't even drive the car and prefers the Astro van even though the GP gets much better gas mileage due to all the issues. Not to mention the car was out of alignment and battery was bad when purchased.
Wish I didn't get rid of the T-bird. Would still be here if somebody didn't put 20,000 miles on an oil change to save money. He was the only one using the car for an entire year and didn't take care of it at all. The first 2 years I had the car the only thing wrong with it was the radiator fan and a fan belt went out. One of the most reliable cars I ever had.