Two years down the road and all three of my elderly vehicles are still going strong. Agnes also blew the alternator but the replacement cost was $110 so I didn’t even blink over that. I replaced the battery too, it was about 7 years old and having the alternator choke it out left it less than reliable. I think that’s about all I’ve had to do on it–oh yeah, window washer pump, that was twenty bucks for the part and thirty for the labor. Wilbur the truck is being driven by my almost son-in-law–I let him put it on more or less permanent loan because he and my daughter moved next door, it keeps the truck exercised and happy and keeps ASIL from buying a motorcycle, which is not the best sort of transportation up here in Puddletown.
Still like my old cars, still cheaper than making even three or four months worth of payments on a new car!
The SDMB is definitely an outlier when it comes to frugality and not just about cars. There’s got to be a happy medium between drive it until it’s dead and trade it in like it’s a pop song you’re sick of hearing.
I’d say reliability is key. Do you have the the type of job with a lot of flexibility? Or, is it the kind of place where you’re supposed to be there at 8 am on the dot or else you’re gonna get the roll eyes? Is it worth it when it breaks down at 11 pm at night and now you’re stuck waiting for AAA in an empty parking lot?
The SDMB also skews older and better educated. It’s a different story if you grew up spinning wrenches and have a decent idea of what a mechanic is talking about. Otherwise, you’re always going to have a suspicion in the back of your mind that you’re getting ripped off and is it worth it to dump a grand into a car and then be asked to choke up another $1000 six months later.
Just like many things in life, the answer isn’t always as easy as crunching numbers on a spreadsheet. You may be saving money with the old car but if being late for the third time in six months due to car problems earns you a spot at the top of your manager’s shit list, is it worth it?
Well, to some extent I get around the reliability problem by having two aged vehicles. But even then, the number of times I’ve had to switch vehicles to get to work on time in the past twenty years still does not use up the fingers of even one hand.
You can have a safe, reliable and old vehicle, but not all old vehicles are either safe or reliable. Context matters.
It also helps having a completely reliable mechanic–mine is a personal friend who’s been wrenching on my cars ever since I bought Time Bomb in '99 and I trust him implicitly to find and fix the problem for a fair price. He makes so much of his living doing propane and CNG conversions for fleets that he basically only works on my cars because we’re friends and I pay cash. 
California adds another factor in the decision to retire a car – the biannual smog check. The 1995 Saturn I used to drive was still pretty reliable when I retired it at just shy of 20 years old – at the time I worked close enough to home to commute by bicycle so I put very few miles on it. But it failed it’s emissions test nearly every time on the first attempt, for a different reason each time. I was getting tired of having to fix various emissions related problems, and the state has a program similar to “Cash for Clunkers” where they’ll give you $1000 to retire a car if it fails smog. That was more than I’d likely get if I sold it myself, so I took them up on that offer.
The 2009 Corolla that replaced it actually died on the freeway a little over a year ago after apparently the coolant all went away (not sure if it leaked out or boiled off) and the car overheated and destroyed the engine. It’s death was partly my fault for trying to drive it home from the Bay Area after it started running poorly, because I didn’t want to have to deal with leaving it at a mechanic two hours from home. But by that time I’d already made up my mind that I wanted a sports car, and was already planning on buying one later that year. This just pushed up the timeline a bit.
So I bought a 2019 MX-5 Miata, which I intend to keep for a long time unless the need arises for a car with a back seat.
I needed to find a new mechanic recently. My car was having sudden strange brake problems culminating in loss of braking. I set up an appointment with a new guy who was nearby and mostly uphill. I drove very slowly, downshifting as needed.
My brakes were totally fucked up. I needed brakes, calipers, and rotors on the rear. The mechanic saved all the parts to show me. My rear brakes had been installed incorrectly, destroying the rotors and calipers and potentially leading to an accident.
The mechanic initially assumed I’d done the work at home. Nope, the work was done by my previous mechanic a week or two before he dropped dead. He was declining for awhile and I had been thinking about finding someone new.
One factor that hasn’t been mentioned here (on this page at least, didn’t read the first page) is safety. My ten year old car needed a lot of work and a new windshield. I could have done it, but I decided that a new car with automatic braking and a backup camera and all the other safety features was worth it.
I understand that this is a luxury not everyone can afford, but by the time I get rid of it I’ll be reasonably old, and that stuff might save a life.
Give it away to someone who needs a car desperately. That’s what I did with one car, and I’ve always felt good about that decision.
Man, I think of ‘frugal’ as watching your pennies. But a new car is >20K even for an inexpensive one these days. Not blowing that much money unnecessarily is hardly being ‘frugal.’ Especially when there are plenty of cars out there that are reliable for their first 200,000 miles, not wanting to drop that sort of money twice as often is just…normal.
Then when the day comes when your house needs a new roof, you can take it in stride.
I just retired my 2006 Honda Ridgeline for a used 2014 Silverado. 218,000 miles vs. 22,000. The Honda needs about $3700 in repairs (A/C, broken rear strut mount, electrical problem with the heater controls) and I really didn’t want to put that much into it. It still ran and drove fine though. The dealer offered $2500 trade in, I listed it for $3500 on Craigslist and accepted $3200. Paid cash for the Chevy and now I have $3200 for dress up items for it.