One of Click and Clack’s earlier books, published in 1991, Had a discussion on buying new vs maintaining your older car.
Their position was that most cars die because their owners subconsciously kill them by letting things go that they would get fixed right away if the car were newer. It is true that a minor issue can turn into a major one if ignored. Extreme but real example: failing to pay attention to oil levels.
Their bottom line was that if you took care of everything right away and the body wasn’t rusting out that it was always less costly to keep your old car going. Yearly costs would go up for the first few years of a car’s life, but tended to level out at (IIRC) around $650 per year. And that took into account things like $1500 transition repairs, which they pointed out don’t happen often, and are offset by years with little maintenance beyond oil changes. And they pointed out that $650 a year is considerably less than the average payments on a new car.
In my post, I was actually going to say about 500 a year, but figured it was car dependent. I’ve got two past the 120 mark and it’s probably 500 a year each. I just had a caliper go bad on the one and replaced the belts and put in a new starter, so it came in at 600 after replacing the rear brakes from the stuck caliper.
I’ve had more than one vehicle go past 120,000 miles and yet I’ve never had to replace a starter, an alternator, a water pump… I have replaced struts, wheel bearings, and a rim but those are, after all, moving parts that get a lot of wear.
Dunno know if I’ve been lucky or I’m really that on top of maintenance. I do try to fix things early.
We donated one car that would have cost more to fix than it was worth. Only title trouble we had was when it got impounded and the lot thought it still belonged to us; one letter straightened that out.
My understanding and personal experience—correct me if I’m wrong, car folks—is that there are lots of different things that could fail or wear out, but only some of them actually will on any given car.
Exactly. As I said, my car’s transmission died in the middle of the IKEA parking lot, and it had only 90,000 miles on it. A Toyota Camry too, which are normally very reliable cars. Mine must have been an unfortunate outlier.
It’s a common problem: the organization you donate to doesn’t register the title under their name. They may say “Oh, leave that blank, it’ll save paperwork when we resell it” or something. And they resell it, and the new owner never registers it. Not sure how the new owner gets license plates on it without registering the title - but in any case, the DMV still thinks the original person owns it. Friends of ours got parking tickets on a car they’d donated months before - fortunately, they had their bill of sale and the tickets went away.
If we were to donate it, we might give it to the local school district - I gather they like getting them to use in auto shop classes etc.
My Wife and I generally drive our cars for 12-15 years. I’m in an 06 Pathfinder now. I like it quite a bit. 207,000 miles. Yeah, It’s needing more repairs. Now it needs a catalytic converter. With all the cross overs, it’s getting harder and harder to find a ‘big midsized’ SUV. Thinking a 4-Runner is next for me. Provided they haven’t turned it into a sedan.
An exception is my Wife had a 2016 Subaru Outback. It had a phantom drain on the battery. Subaru dealerships said everything from “we can’t find it”, to “that’s normal”. Horseshit. The battery would die in about 1 week if it was not driven. The Subaru dealerships just would put a new battery in it. Yeah, I’m still kinda pissed about it and would have followed up… But, my wife said she really wasn’t in love with the car, and she traded it in on a new Subaru Ascent. We do really like the Ascent (I wasn’t thrilled about the Outback either. Could be bigger, and too low to the ground [hard for me to get in and out of])
So, different situations call for different responses, with cars or anything in life.
When I feel that I can no longer rely on it. My 2002 Saturn conked out on the morning of Christmas Eve a couple of year ago; a nice man in a tow truck took us both to the dealership, but it was a close call whether or not anything would be done to fix the car that day since the shop was closing up early for the holiday. I loved that Saturn, but this wasn’t the first of its problems. I never wanted to be in that kind of position again.
Hah - you and me both. I drive a CRV. I like the height. The only issue with getting into and out of it (I’m tall, well-fed and klutzy) is that the floor curves up a bit at the door and so there’s a lip you have to get your legs over - and I also knock my head against the top edge of the doorframe with some regularlity. The Civic… well, it’s great to drive, aside from being so low to the ground that you don’t have the same kind of visibility. But I have genuine trouble getting into and out of it. I just don’t understand why some cars are so effing low to the ground - I think that car’s seat is at most 12 inches above the pavement. *
I’ll have to add the Ascent to our short list for the new car we need to get for my husband.
You mention your Outback had a battery drain Heisenbug.
Before the CRV, I had a Dodge Caravan bought in 1996. We drove that for 10 years and over 120K miles. It had a number of issues like the air conditioning needing to be totally replaced. Its death warrant was set in motion when we drove it to Niagara Falls with the kids. We were meeting up with a group of internet friends at a restaurant a few miles from the hotel. I started walking in with the kids, and my husband came running after me saying the car was making weird noises and wouldn’t re-start. So I sent the kids in with the friends (yep, I took my kids to another country and sent them off with strangers :D) and went back to the car.
Sure enough, it was making (or attempting to make) every electronic sound it had ever known - chirp / beep / bing / buzz… incessantly.
I called AAA - and found they had a deal with CAA. They said they’d be 40 minutes. After a bit I looked toward the front of this large restaurant parking lot, saw a CAA truck, and took off running, because I was afraid they’d look there, think we weren’t around, and leave.
Nope… they were already on a call.
For another US-owned Dodge Caravan!
They did what they could for that car (it could not be saved - that family’s trip was ruined!) and came back to us. They thought the issue was with corrosion on the battery terminals - and I seem to recall they trimmed the cables a bit and cleaned off the terminals, managed to get it reconnected, and the car started.
So we got home a few days later and started trying to get the problem fixed. A new battery. New cables. A new alternator (well, refurbished - it was a 10 year old car after all). A new starter. Nothing fixed the issue that the car simply would not always start when requested. It never stranded us again - it always started after a few attempts - but I didn’t trust it any more. Financial columnist Michelle Singletary always says “Buy used, and keep it until your mechanic is on speed dial”. Well, we’d bought it new - but the day I called the shop from memory, I knew it was time.
We sold it via private sale shortly after we got the CRV, which is now 12 years old with about 160K miles, and aside from wonky headlights (I finally made them replace the assembly, not just the bulbs) it’s performed well. If we could afford 2 new cars, I’d give THAT to the son and junk the Civic.
Height-wise, going from one extreme to another: we recently booked a minivan for a family trip - more comfortable and we knew we’d be transporting people to/from a wedding. They only had 1 minivan, and another family asked if they could have it even though we were there first. We didn’t care - they gave us a discount and a Ford Expedition which is the largest thing I’ve ever driven that didn’t come from U-Haul. It was at least 4 feet too long - maybe 6 - to fit in a normal parking space. If I stood next to that on the ground, the floor of the car was above my knee. It had the running board / step thingy and I had to use it. We were transporting elderly parents - both very short, and mobility-impaired - and I brought a footstool and they were under orders to not even ATTEMPT to get in or out without one of us there to spot them.
A single owner '98 Civic under 250K miles with a manual? Sheesh, that’s barely broken in! Struts? You can drive it with crap struts essentially forever, it just makes the ride a little harsh. I just did wheel bearings and hubs on my '99 Subaru (just under 250K miles), cost me $850 and I expect I’ll be driving it well over 300K unless the transmission poops out and even then I’ll consider getting one out of a pick 'n pull to keep her going. There’s nothing wrong with driving an older car, especially if you know it well and have maintained it properly. So you occasionally have to fork out a few hunskis to fix something–it will never cost as much as a new car with payments and interest and high insurance and there’s NO guarantee that your new car won’t have problems too, but it’s a certainty that when it has problems the new car will cost more to fix both in labor and in parts. Older cars are cheap to fix and not having all the computerized geegaws in them makes them even cheaper. Get a bad motherboard in a few years old vehicle and it’ll run you 2K to replace and you won’t be able to limp the car around until you raise the cash because it will not run at all until you get it a new brain.
I love old cars–the '99 Subie is the newest one of the lot, I have a '92 Dodge truck (runs like a champ but has a phantom ground side drain that necessitated putting a battery isolator on so it doesn’t run the battery down if I don’t drive it every day–cost for that? Under ten bucks) and an '89 Chevy van that just needs a charge put on the battery and it’d be perfectly serviceable, just as it has been for the last 175K miles I’ve driven it. They all pretty much look like shit but when the criddlers come around breaking into cars they leave mine the hell alone. That right there is worth bank money, when my neighbors are all outside pissed off at their broken windows and jacked up doors I’m just smiling because the hoboes won’t even touch my ratty looking beasts and that’s just the way I like it.
I guess everyone in the world is more frugal than me. At some point after 100k I get sick of the car and I get a new one. I don’t have a formula but having to do more than just routine repairs would make me change quicker.
I wonder if that was me in the other Caravan? Probably August 2002, on the way home from Niagara, the loaner Grand Caravan that we were in had a sudden coolant line failure near St. Catherines. AAA sent the CAA, and got us to a Canadian Tire to arrange the repair, and Hertz stayed open in order to get me a one way rental back to Michigan (I had to return it in Sarnia, though).
Reminds me of an Olds that I bought for $1500. Never could restart it while it was still warm, always had to wait for the engine to cool then it would start with no problem.
Ended up having it declared totalled after backing out of a parking spot and into a fire hydrant that I couldn’t see. GEICO gave me more money than I had paid for it.
I plan on driving my 99 Ford Super Duty until the engine or transmission blows up spectacularly, or the frame breaks in half. But I do have a bit of an emotional attachment to that truck.
Most of the vehicles I have owned have been driven in New England, where the road salt almost always kills them faster via rust as opposed to mechanical failure. I have spent far more on body repairs over the years than anything mechanical in attempts to stop the cancer before it spreads too far to repair.
Hah - good point on the struts. Turns out we had already done the front struts (800ish); the rear ones remain (about 550). I don’t recall what the A/C repair was gonna cost but it was probably similar.
We’re in a DC suburb, and summers can be tooth-meltingly muggy here, so A/C isn’t really optional. If we weren’t giving it to my son, we’d want to replace it anyway as my husband is finding the manual transmission more and more of a hassle with our stop-and-go traffic. Note that this didn’t stop him from driving it 2 hours home from skiing, with a freshly broken left knee a few months back! The A/C cools - just not very well.
And it’s worth so little that the property tax on it is essentially nil - I think we paid about 80 bucks for both this year (as opposed to over a grand when my CRV was new).
The bit about the memory boards: I haven’t had that failure in a car - but HAVE had it happen with household appliances… and the repair is almost the cost of a new one :(.
If the car craps out, he won’t be able to borrow one of ours, as he’s going back to a college town a couple hours away in a few weeks. It’s possible repairs will be cheaper there too. I guess if it were bad enough, we’d get him a replacement as quickly as we could.
For fun, I looked at “certified pre-owned” Hondas. They’re all in the past 5 years, age-wise, and are very pricy (cheapest Civic was at least 12K). That’s not in the budget, what with needing a newer one for my husband as well, so I guess we’d be looking at ones in the 10-year-old range. Other manufacturers / models as well, of course, it was just a casual look at Honda’s site.
Agnes The First, a '96 Camry, had fucked out rear struts when I got her and still had the same ones three years and 75K miles later when she barfed her tranny and had to be sent to Pick 'n Pull land. She cost me $800 to buy and maybe a total of another $1500 in miscellaneous repairs while I had her. That’s like four cents a mile, can’t beat that. The struts made some noise on a rough road but that little car took me all kinds of places, like out to Utah twice for kayaking trips–the second trip I brought my own boat and I was going 90mph+ out on the desert roads in Nevada with a boat on top of her, which had to be a little surreal looking. Great little car, and she had the courtesy to drop the tranny while she was within five miles of home so the tow back was free.
If you know what you’re doing, driving old cars is practically free.
I gave my 2003 Mazda B2300 P/U with just over 100K miles on it to a friend last year and bought a new car. My ‘free’ truck cost my friend ~S1000. $300 for registration, that I let lapse for a year and $700 for struts, brakes and some other things that caused it to nearly conk out just days before I bought my new car. My friend told me that mechanic/bodyshop guy told him that for another $500-700 dollars they would fix the big dent in the bed as well perform a full tuneup/additional repairs. My other friend who I first offered the truck to and refused was upset when the mechanic talked to him and the friend I gave it to how much more life the truck had in it.
BTW, there’s no timing belt and all the belts were replaced a under my 10 year extended warranty.
TL;DR - I gave away a 14 y.o. p/u worth ~$2000, but needed a $300 registration renewal + $700 in repairs to make it driveable, + another $700 to put it in good (not great) shape. So to me, a break even giveaway.
