Quote:
Originally Posted by KingOfJericho
There are some great cars out there that are simply cost-prohibitive to own. There's a reason why a $200k Mercedes CL65 is now selling for $20k. My buddy owns one of my all-time halo vehicles, a VW Touareg V10 diesel. He also happens to be a VW master tech so he can wrench it himself and has parts readily available at cost. For the layperson to maintain the same vehicle would be nearly cost-prohibitive. Hell, I had a 2010 Audi S4 WITH a warranty and the clutch felt weak from the day I bought it (CPO). I called the dealer out of curiosity to see how much it would cost to replace. The answer? $5,000. That's a truly insane amount of money for a daily driver.
It always comes to a point where the repairs are possible and may not cost exactly as much as a new vehicle over the course of a year but you have to deal with downtime of being without a car (no loaners at an indy shop), the unpredictability of not know when or how expensive the next repair will be, and the cost-benefit of constantly repairing an aging and increasingly obsolete vehicle.
I went through this with my bicycle recently. I was talking to a high school friend (who now works for Cannondale) about bikes and wanting to fix up the bike I rode in high school (middle of the road Giant). It needs a rear hub and a front fork rebuild. His point was that having those items addressed would probably cost me $400 - roughly $350 more than the bike is actually worth. His point was that it makes much more sense to put that $400 toward a much more modern bike. I did just that and I'm thrilled I did so. That same logic applies to cars.
|
My E90 found it's 4th deer last year in April. At the age and mileage, my insurance totaled it. I bought it back and paid $1,800 or so out of pocket to repair the body damage. The E90 is my 2,800-mile per month daily driver. I've driven 28,000 miles since it was repaired. So the resurrection has cost me just 6.4 cents per mile. Depreciation on a new $40,000 sport sedan would be 10 times that amount for the same miles driven. Some times it makes sense to keep older, high mileage cars in operating condition. Divide the $1,800 by the total miles on the car and the resurrection cost just less than half a cent per mile.