Info on the '97 Cadillac STS

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emad

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Wee! Yet another thread on "which car should my parents buy" :P

My parents just got an extremely awesome offer on a '97 Cadillac STS from my bro's friend. His licence is suspended so he won't be able to drive it for at least another year so he's offering it to us for $5000 plus we have to do $5000 worth of print jobs for him over the next few months. Not a bad deal IMO considering that the average running price for these in Toronto is around 13k.

The car seems to be in good condition and hasn't really left the parking lot for about 2 months now. It's got about 140,000 km on it and the car has been pretty well taken care of. He bought it from a leasing company not too long ago and he hasn't had many probs with it. My brother has driven it a few times over the past year and he likes the power it puts to the wheels quite a bit. Something like 300hp if I remember correctly.

My dad is adamant against American cars, claiming that they're absurdly unreliable and the like. But because the deal is pretty good, there's a 50/50 chance that we can get it.

The cars we've already looked at are the Nissan Altima 3.5SE, Mitsubishi Galant V6, and the Chrysler 300. My dad refuses to look at the 300 series but he REALLY likes the Altima because it's efficient, powerful, and luxurious...but it's also fairly expensive to get one even 3 or 4 years old.

Basically, I'd like to know whether or not this thing will be able to last us a few years, how reliable it is, and how it compares to the cars I just mentioned.
 
Build quality on the Cadillac should be better than a Chevy, and reliability should be on par with the Nissan (and superior to the Galant).
 
I absolutely love the 1997 Cadillac Seville STS (and all 1993-1997 STS models) and I wish more people would consider these things as first cars since they're so cheap and pretty quick (I have a 1997 quoted 0-60 time at 7.1sec for the SLS, which means the STS, which had 25 extra horsepower, probably completed the task in 6.9 - I have 6.7 quoted in 1996).

With that said, I think it's an interesting alternative to a new car like an Altima or Galant. There's a family down the block from me who only buys used luxury cars. Right now they have an '01 S80 2.9 (which replaced a late-80s 735i) and a '94 740iL. Frankly, these used luxury cars are the deal of the century and no-one knows it. You get good performance, an obscene amout of standard features (the '97 STS had, standard, 4-wheel all-disc ABS, automatic leveling with automatic shock absorber control, traction control, dual power seats, automatic dual-zone climate control, remote keyless entry, automatic headlights, rain-sensing variable-intermittent wipers, driver memory, leather, automatic dimming mirrors, and something called a "rear air circulation fan" which kind of scares me - you can't get a lot of that on an Altima), and a car that's probably been well-maintained, and you get to let someone else take a huge depreciation hit.

I don't know if I recommend it over an Altima or Galant, but this car was $54000 (CAD - $45000 US) in 1997, so $5000 CAD + $5000 CAD of work seems like a decent deal; it translates to a total of about $8300 US, which is slightly higher than the going rate for these things in Michigan, though Blue Book has this thing at $10600 US, which is $12800 CAD. I've actually seen '98 SLSs for that so I'm not quite buying that price.

Either way - I do urge you to consider this. The Northstar engine will be significantly more reliable than most other engines, it's got lots of features for a good price, and it performs very well.
 
M5Power
I don't know if I recommend it over an Altima or Galant, but this car was $54000 (CAD - $45000 US) in 1997, so $5000 CAD + $5000 CAD of work seems like a decent deal; it translates to a total of about $8300 US, which is slightly higher than the going rate for these things in Michigan, though Blue Book has this thing at $10600 US, which is $12800 CAD. I've actually seen '98 SLSs for that so I'm not quite buying that price.
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There was a miscommunication on the price when I was talking to my bro. He's actually only charging us $5000 of work and he owes us a few k's. All we'd have to pay in cash is the emmissions, certification, and GST. The cost to us is something like $2500 cash to have all fo that done. Then we just have to write off his debt to us and do a bit of work. Not bad as a whole.

Right now, it's all boiling down to what my dad says and does. We would also have to find a buyer for our Accord as well as fight some more with our insurance company.
 
He's seriously considering the offer seeing as how nice the car is, but it's still 50/50 right now. We'll see what happens in a week or two.
 

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