It's now been a year and half since I sold my white 1995 Lumina. However, it was my very first car after I got my license, so every detail about it is etched in my memory. While I am not driving it anymore, I can still provide a relatively accurate picture of it to others.

I bought this car (a white 1995 Lumina) used with 105,000 miles from a friend's colleague. They were the first owners of the car and the owner's brother was a GM employee, so the car had an extended warranty long after the standard one expired. I was told it was well maintained but I did not ask to see the maintenance records. I was on the lookout for any car and did not really have an idea of the type or brand of car I wanted. Call me naive, but that's what I was at that point in time. Anyway, my friend and I went over to look at the car. Everything seemed fine except there was a small patch of paint missing on the sides. There was also some rust on the rocker panels. Big deal, I thought, because cosmetic issues should not affect how the car drives. In hindsight, I think I should have paid more attention to the paint (more about it later in the review). The price seemed right even with these issues, so I went ahead and bought it. I was very happy considering it was a huge midsize car. Besides, the car was optioned out to be like the LS trim, except for the 3.4L engine. I don't drive much (10-20 miles per day), so this seemed like a car that would get the job done. Little did I know this was just the beginning.

A week after I bought the car, the left turn indicator would not stay on. A couple of days later, the brake lights went out. I took the car to the nearest Midas, but was told that this problem was due to the electrical system and that I would need to take it to the dealer. I had both issues fixed by the dealer for nearly $500. There were no issues after that for a while.

On the plus side, I did like the fact that the car was very spacious and had a considerable amount of power when needed. The car was also very quiet in terms of the ride and you could never guess the speed accurately on the highway, it was just so quiet. Also white cars are cheap on insurance and no one ever steals Luminas, so the insurance bill was the lowest it could be. This being a used car, I also opted only for liability coverage.

As far as the interior went, the front bench seats were a bit uncomfortable because of my small frame (5'4"), but the driver's seat was power adjustable, so after a while I learned to find a relatively comfortable setting. I was still very close to the steering. The car also has a long nose and the seats sit low, so if you are a small person, it can be hard to see the front edge of the car. I learned this by experience in the first few days when I scraped a wall in the parking lot trying to get the car out in reverse. The audio system with a cassette is adequate. You can plug in an Ipod through a cassette adapter.

Coming back to the story, in the next few months, I had to have the brakes fixed. They were too soft to be safe and like some others have mentioned, the front brakes on this car wear out a lot faster than the rear ones. Another $400 or so.

The next big surprise came when I went on vacation for a few weeks in winter the following year. When I returned all tires of the car were flat. I don't know what might have caused it but I had the car towed and had all four tires replaced. Another $340 for 16" Dunlop GT qualifiers. This is a maintenance item, but 16" tires are expensive on a beater car.

Besides the tires, there was one other "issue". One of my friends tried to push some accumulated snow off the car when I was away and presto, all paint on the roof came off along with the snow! Over the next few days, much of the paint on the sides too started to flake off. The car was quickly becoming an eyesore. I would park it in the back parking lot in our office where nobody could see it. A couple of co-workers commented that they had seen other white Luminas with the same problem. I did not want to fix this problem given that I had bought the car really cheap. However after a while I gave in because it looked like the roof would soon start rusting in the Michigan winter and had it professionally repainted it at Maaco for $700 (paint and new rocker panels because of the rust). There was a deal going on which enabled me to get the higher quality paint job for the price of the basic "Ambassador" service that they have. The car ended up looking like new and I was pretty happy. Still not the end of the story.

In the next couple of months, I spent a couple of hundred on getting the wheel alignment fixed because I went over a curb in the snow. The car started to drag to one side and this is a pretty heavy car with a somewhat stiff steering, so this fix solved the problem. I also spent $200 on the driver's side power window which would not roll down. I could have lived with that, but I am pretty meticulous about car maintenance and so had it fixed.

So slowly the repair costs started exceeding the book value of the car. But there was still no guarantee that the engine or transmission would not act up next. I could not justify spending money on new headgaskets, an engine or transmission, so I sold the car for nearly the price I bought it for. The mileage at that point was 119,000. So you can imagine that my costs per mile were really high. I drove only 14000 miles on this car for almost $2500 in repairs, not counting the synthetic oil changes and other maintenance items I did according to the recommendations of the local Jiffy lube and Midas, like a transmission fluid flush. If I had not bought the car cheap in the first place, I would have really regretted it.

The next few owners were the lucky ones in my opinion. The car is still running at 136,000 miles without any further problems. The next owner recharged the A/C system in the summer and re-did the transmission fluid flush (did not check with me - not sure how the shop recommended a transmission fluid flush when the existing fluid was brand new)

In short, I would not recommend this car. You probably won't spend on a transmission or engine, which is basically the others on this site suggest when they call it "reliable", but total costs in terms of dollars would probably still come out to the same.

In a weird sense, I prefer to spend the same dollar amount on a transmission or an engine. They are mechanical parts that perform some useful work over 100 or 150,000 miles so replacing an engine is a justified expense. But having to spend $700 (or even half of that) on a paint job or $200 on a power window is just ridiculous. There are many such electrical problems on this car that crop up from time to time. Unfortunately, like the brake lights, they are connected to safety, so you cannot ignore them either.

Besides the repair expenses, the gas mileage of this car in the city is pathetic. I got about 14.5 MPG in all city driving. I bought the car used, but this was my first car and I maintained it really well, so I could not find a reason why the gas mileage was so abysmal. Another reason I wanted to get rid of it at the earliest opportunity.

In summary, if in doubt, buy Japanese. Which is what I did. I bought a Corolla of the same year (wrote an epinion for it a couple of days back) and for nearly the same price taking inflation into account. It has not given me any real repair bills in the past year and a half (but some maintenance items which I could have avoided if I had been careful talking to the original owner).

If you need more space, buy a Japanese SUV. If you need more power, buy a Japanese car with a good V6. I always thought that if a car was well maintained, it should not matter which brand it was. Not anymore, as I learned from my experience with the wonderful white Lumina.
Amount Paid (US$): 1800
Condition: Used
Model Year: 1995
Model and Options: Base but all options from the LS except for engine