Where are you going to do maintenance? In your garage or driveway in the home you own? That's a pretty big privilege.

The reality is a low income person is living in low income housing, typically large apartment complexes. These places have strict rules against doing car maintenance and work in their parking lots. In addition it's a huge privilege to have weekend and free time to do car work yourself, not to mention buying the tools and materials necessary for it.

Working on cars is a hobby for middle class folks nowadays, it's not a solution to the general problem that low income people need reliable transportation in most of America.

Even my not low-income ($3-$5k / mo) apartment complex forbids this.

If you want car maintenance, or to run your own business, or any number of other things, you need to first own a home, apparently. And that just furthers the article's point…

I would have to imagine a $3-5k type place would be even less likely to allow this.

Honestly, a parking garage. I’ve done a LOT of small car repairs, installed exhausts, simple mods, etc for people in a random retail parking garage after hours. As long as you aren’t disassembling the motor and you’re not an asshole the security guard making $12/hr driving a hoopty in the exact same boat as you is not going to hassle you.

It’s a lot less fun than doing it in a proper shop with a lift and power tools, but given enough effort you can do nearly anything with jackstands, a trolley jack, and basic hand tools.

The great thing about a vehicle is that it’s mobile and can take itself to a place away from the tightest/most enforced of restrictions.

I’ve done more maintenance on unpaved surfaces or even parked in front of signs saying I couldn’t do it than I care to recall.

If the choices are between a $40 pad slap and a $400+ repair shop visit, a lot people will find a way to do the former.

Parking Garages. Autozone Parking Lot. Saw two guys detailing their cars and adding trim to them in the parking lot of a trail head in seattle earlier this week.

I once replaced an alternator in an AutoZone parking lot. At the time I had a '97 Ford Ranger XLT, which I got used in '03.

It had broken down outside of Phoenix as I was driving cross-country from Ohio to LA. I got towed to the parking lot, used most of my remaining money to get the alternator, and then hung around til they closed up so that I could borrow an employees tools and a light for a pack of cigarettes. That truck is still in service today, though I sold it back in 2011.

The assumption that a 2005 CR-V in reasonable condition is a $3k car was probably a decent one 3 years ago. Less so now if my recent auto shopping is any indication.

I like driving older cars into the well-maintained 200-300k mile range myself and I heartily agree that it’s the economical choice. I’ve financed a year-long sabbatical by driving a ‘93 sedan, so the potential gains really are not only four figures per year, they can reach into five figures.

At the same time the GP’s projection of catastrophic failure rings true to me — almost every car I’ve had reached this point. Each time I’ve also either had the resources to deal with the problem or generous help to fall back on, but it’s easy to imagine what it would be like if that had not been the case and it isn’t pretty. And it’s usually time-consuming and inconvenient to find the next bargain old auto as well.