Anyone compared the cost of driving older vs newer cars?

[troyguitar]

I've been wondering about this recently. Has anyone compared the overall cost of say a 2 year old used car vs a 12 year old version of the same thing? Where overall means purchase price plus all expenses like loan interest, insurance, gas, maintenance, repairs, rental cars if necessary during repairs minus the sale price after owning it for a given period of time?

Obviously brand new stuff depreciates like crazy and costs more than CPO stuff, but I have wondered how much is really saved (if any) by going to something even older than a CPO candidate when all things are considered.

No particular reason for the question, I've just been thinking that we should consider picking up a 3rd car for our household since we drive a combined 60k miles a year in opposite directions and have a combined 200k miles on our Audi's - chances are high that one of them will be down for repairs for a significant amount of time each year :lol:

 

[D Griff]

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I've read that buying a 2-3 year old example and keeping it for about five years is most economical. There is a lot of luck involved though with an old car, and it depends on how well it's been maintained it's whole life, if you DIY repairs, if you fix every little thing or live with some small issues, etc.

I bought a nine year old Civic for $3k drove it for five years/50k miles and then sold it for $1.4k. I spent about $3k on maintenance and repairs in that time... so around $1,000/year for depreciation, maintenance and repairs... pretty good.

 

[troyguitar]

Yeah I DIY almost everything which saves money but I also have to fix everything properly which costs money. My concern is that a $5k car will turn into a $15k car because I'll feel compelled to make it perfect - which is part of the reason I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just call up Enterprise whenever I need to have one of the Audi's down for repair :lol:

 

[D Griff]

Renting cars is honestly pretty cheap.

If you're a perfectionist older cars get much more expensive. My Miata was $2k and I have it in pretty decent shape now with probably $1k of stuff, nothing waiting to fail or anything like that... But if I wanted every little thing to be perfect, I would need to sink in another $3-5k before mods.

 

[rmchung]

I bought my 89 civic hatch used and it lasted me 10 years. Probably spent less than $1000 maintaining it (pretty sure every part on that car was still stock). Put 120k miles on that thing and only got rid of it because I didn't want to have the speedometer fixed for a smog inspection. I think I changed the oil on the car maybe 4 times...usually I just dumped a qrt of the cheapest brand in once in a while. My current ride...definitely will surpass the cost in a shorter time. I don't think I'll ever have another car that lasted that long and ran like a champ with almost no maintenance.