How about a Maserati? Best Used Cars on eBay for Less Than $15,000
Maybe not a good Maserati, but we did find a sweet Mercedes, a clean Miata, and a far-out Plymouth.
Shopping for used cars used to be fun as heck. You scour the web, walk through dealer lots, and generally play the most fun game of “Should I?” ever as you look at horsepower figures, how many doors you get, and whether or not all your stuff will fit into its frunk. Because of the chip shortage and high asking prices on used cars, however, it’s sucked the fun right out of it.
We’re looking to change that and find you, our dear readers, a few affordable used cars on eBay that would look perfect sitting in your garage or parked on your street. We gave ourselves a $15,000 price cap and no salvage titles. That’s it. We then had an hour-long meeting to narrow down our long lists of contenders.
In reality, it was mostly managing editor Jonathon Klein who needed help with his ever-growing list. To his credit, he’s been searching for a new family car for the past few weeks. “Have you heard of the Felicity Ace?" he said. "Yeah, it'd be easier to get those cars than a new or used Honda Ridgeline right now."
Check out what we’ve found for you.
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Hank O’Hop
- 11,501 miles (probably not original)
- $11,500
I picked this Trailduster because I'm an easy-to-please Mopar enthusiast. It's got a removable top, aluminum slot wheels, it's lifted, and there's a 440 under the hood. Pretty much anything you'd dream of doing to it on a budget has already been done. It's also just a rad platform that you don't really see much of and will only get harder to find.
Robert Bacon
- 29,458 miles
- $14,500
Anyone who’s searched for a reasonably priced sports car has probably heard that a Miata is always the answer, and that’s because it usually is. There’s a long list of aftermarket parts for these roadsters, which you can modify to compete in just about any motorsports discipline. Even if you’re not interested in doing an LS swap or fitting coilovers, you won’t be let down. This model embodies driving pleasure, even in standard trim. It’s a driver’s car with a beautifully smooth manual transmission and enough power to put a smile on your face without getting you into trouble. It’s a two-seat, rear-wheel-drive car with a soft top, but it has Japanese levels of reliability. There’s a reason this is the best-selling roadster of all time.
Kara Snow
- 64,000 miles
- $14,000
Yes, Virginia, you can buy a Maserati for less than $15K. This “beauty” is none other than a joint project between Chrysler and Maserati, the brainchild of Lee Iaccoca and Alejandro de Tomaso (later of Pantera fame). While it looks very much like a LeBaron, these have a fancy porthole window in its removable fiberglass top that sports a mashup of the Chrysler and the Maserati logos. These are all genuine Italian imports, and only 7,500 were made.
Jonathon Klein
- 41,600
- $14,500
How could I not choose this rad E Class riding on monoblocks? If you saw this while browsing eBay's pages and you didn't stop, you'd have to turn in your enthusiast card. This is peak luxury. It's a sedan, so it's practical. It's built for the autobahn and excess speed. It's of the Mercedes vintage when everything worked and anything that didn’t could be fixed with a hammer. The price is somewhat inflated thanks to our current used-car hellscape, but you're still getting a lot of car for the money. The mileage is low, so it's practically new.
Honorable Mentions
- 200,000 miles
- $14,990
- 204,500 miles
- $15,000
- 250 miles (definitely not original)
- $11,500
- 54,000 miles
- $15,000
