When should you replace a car? (maintenance costs vs purchase/lease costs)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Financially & practically speaking, is there an “optimal” point at which an already paid-off car should be replaced/traded in for another vehicle?

I currently drive a 2016 Subaru Crosstrek, and it’s actually been totally reliable so far. But it’s also been in a fender-bender, recently hit 100k miles, and is very much past due for scheduled maintenance. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had any maintenance done on it beyond oil changes (do you still need to these days?), so I’m not sure of the mechanical shape it’s in…

It’s getting a detailed inspection at the mechanic next week, but their preliminary estimate just for the standard 100k maintenance is about $1700. It seems like the car is worth maybe $8-10k right now on the used market?

So, what’s the right way to think about this… mathematically? Is it a plot of repair costs vs KBB estimates, or vs another car’s monthly payments, or…? Is it better to spend a few grand on maintenance and keep driving it into the ground, or does it make more sense to replace it while it still has some meaningful value as opposed to none?

We’ve had a few older threads about this (from decades ago), like 1, 2, and 3, but I feel like cars have changed quite a bit since then… way more in-cabin tech that improves safety and comfort, but probably at the expense of reliability?

Plus, now EVs are a thing. My partner recently got one after someone set her old car on fire, and I have to admit that it drives so much better than the Crosstrek ever did, even when it was brand spanking new. Every time I drive my own car now, I can’t help but wonder if something is broken or if that’s just how ICE vehicles are… but well, I can’t justify a new car just for the drive feel alone, if the Crosstrek otherwise works. But what about maintenance? I wonder if a new/used EV could significantly decrease those costs.

Plus there are other minor factors, like it would be nice to have something slightly bigger, or that can accelerate fast enough to merge without almost dying every time (the '16 Crosstrek is slow)… but… none of those are reason enough on their own. It has to be a financially prudent decision too.

Thoughts / advice?

2

Yes, you need to change engine oil at the specified intervals. Even if the oil constituents aren’t breaking down from thermal and tribological stresses they contain microscopic particles that are generated by the operation of moving mechanical assemblies (i.e. the pistols and crankshaft) under load.

Save for battery replacement cost, the total cost of ownership of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) is substantially lower than gasoline or diesel powered internal combustion vehicles. With battery replacement it is roughly comparable (depending on the vehicle and battery capacity). Your Crosstrek could easily go another 100k miles (assuming you maintain it) and still be in salable condition, but the price of gasoline is likely to go nowhere but up. Fundamentally your question depends on how willing you are to invested in a large capital expenditure, whether you can realize the ‘market price’ on your current car, and whether you can live with the limitations of a BEV versus the ongoing costs of maintenance with your current vehicle and increasing likelihood of issues as it wears. This is probably a good point to considered a BEV because they’ve been around long enough for particular brands to develop a reputation, but the technologies will doubtless mature and costs will likely go down with broader adoption.

Stranger

3

The answer to this question is, “just before it needs a major repair”. The trick, of course, is picking that moment.

But srsly, I don’t think there’s a real formula.

4

This is just my subjective opinion, so take it for what it’s worth. My attitude has always – always – been to drive it into the ground. With the obvious caveats about being safe and reliable. In some other thread a long time ago I think I posted actual stats about how much money this can save you, until you reach the point where reliability becomes an issue.

I’m currently in the middle of this exact same dilemma. My current car has been amazingly reliable but it’s 20 years old and has a number of minor issues, plus a major issue of lots of rust spots, but that’s purely cosmetic. I have a chance to buy a used car from my generous ex-wife for less than the blue-book wholesale value, or else she’ll send it out to auction and get more for it. It’s been very well maintained its whole life and is a car at a price and with an impeccable maintenance record that I would never, ever find on the used market. The retail price would be around twice as much.

But I like what I have, despite the rust, and would rather not spend the money. But if I don’t, the opportunity will be forever gone within a day or two.

I have been in agony over this decision for days. I find that lots of rum helps ease the angst, but doesn’t lead to a decision. :tropical_drink:

5

If you are not maintaining it, it’s time to let it go. You are at the millage/age where lack of maintenance will bite you.

6

There may be an element of self-fulfilling prophecy about this, in the sense that people who intend to keep their cars for a long time may be more diligent about keeping up with regular maintenance and repairs.

7

Was the fender-bender someone else’s fault? Because I think body damage tends to lead people to neglect their car otherwise. So if possible, have the body work fixed properly. When I’ve had that done (almost always paid for by the other driver) the car is returned looking like new. I think they wash and wax the car as part of the process. And I’ve had the body shop repair any minor damage that was my fault and unrelated to the accident.

And over the hundred thousand miles you’ve been driving it, there are other maintenance items that should be done or should have been done. Even if you have to spend $2,000 or so on the maintenance, the car will probably be fine to drive for a while longer and the expense justified.

8

Yes, there are items like spark plugs and fluids for transmission and differential. I looked it up and your 2016 Crosstrek has a timing chain, not a timing belt, so that is a good thing and for that (engine timing) you should be good for… well, forever really. At least a very long time. Be sure to keep changing the oil.

I’m of the mindset to drive it ‘til it dies. But besides approaching this objectively, mathematically, there is the subjective / emotional / fun angle to this, and that is something only you can assess for yourself.

Another angle to all of this is that safety features in cars generally trends to being better with time, so you’re approaching 10 years of ownership and cars have generally gotten much safer today.

If you’re the kind that doesn’t always do the scheduled maintenance, then maybe an EV is right for you. Tires and windshield wipers, that’s basically it.

Finally, yes the ‘16 Crosstrek is slow. I like the Crosstrek package, but I’m glad I test drove one because it is a dog. I chose the OBW instead. Outback Wilderness. The OBW moves acceptably well.

9

While the Vimes theory of Boots is fun, it’s not real life.

Until your old car is actually garbage, it’s almost certainly less expensive to keep it than to sell it and buy a slightly less old car or a new car to replace it. Routine-ish maintenance even if it’s 1-2k is worth it.

Buying a newer car almost always costs more money in the long run, but you get something for that money.

At some point, you will have a car that’s only of use to a hobbyist who can keep it going with their own “free” labor and cheap used parts. When you get rid of that car, it will likely be sold to supply those cheap used parts.

10

Any calculation of total cost would have to include the cost of the unreliability itself, which is a bit of a wild card. Getting stranded in the middle of the nowhere some stormy night is very disruptive at best and potentially disastrous at worst. For that matter, sudden mechanical breakdowns could include brake failure or other outright safety problems. A tractor breaking down somewhere on the family farm might amount to a purely economic repair issue, but cars driven long distances with kids inside are different.

11

I don’t believe that this is true.

An EV costs more than the equivalent gasoline-powered car, mostly due to the battery cost.

Now, once you get past that up-front cost, the operating cost for an EV is actually significantly less than for a gasoline car. Charging is cheaper than gasoline on a per mile basis. Maintenance costs are less for an EV (you don’t have engine oil to change, belts to replace, etc). And with fewer mechanical parts, an EV is probably going to be more reliable and have lower repair costs.

But then when you’re done with the vehicle and want to trade it in, EVs depreciate a lot more than gasoline vehicles. Your trade-in value will be significantly less with the EV.

If you look at overall cost of ownership, the lower operating costs of the EV typically aren’t enough to offset the higher purchase cost and the lower trade-in value.

That said, depending on where you live, you might have local incentives that tip the scale in the other direction.

There are other factors to consider as well. If you only use the car for local commuting, you just charge it up at night and it’s always ready to go the next day. You don’t have to go to the gas station and fuel up every week. On the other hand, if you take a lot of long trips, you need to plan around where charging stations are available. You will need to recharge more frequently than you would need to fill up a gasoline-powered car, and a typical recharge is going to take 15 minutes (typically you’ll only charge it to 80 percent to save time), where you can fill up a gasoline-powered car much more quickly and be on your way.

There are also environmental factors to consider. Pollution from gasoline-powered cars is significant. Exactly how “green” an EV can be is a bit debatable, since the power source for an EV probably comes mostly from natural gas or nuke power plants (solar, wind, etc are still a minority of energy production). At least with a fossil fuel plant you’ve got all of the pollution in one place where it can be better managed. Nuke plants don’t pollute the air, but then you do have Chernobyl and Fukushima type events every few decades. Exactly how likely we are to have another nuclear accident is debatable.

There are also a lot of significant environmental downsides associated with EV battery production and disposal, which you don’t get with a gasoline engine.

Performance-wise, an electric motor has full torque right from a standstill and has a much wider operating range than a gasoline engine, so much so that a transmission isn’t even needed for an EV. This makes a typical EV a lot peppier than its gasoline equivalent. Plus the EV is a lot quieter. The smoother acceleration and quieter ride do tend to make an EV a lot more comfortable to drive or ride in.

If you want a performance car, EVs are hard to beat. The high starting torque and wide torque range make it difficult for a gasoline-powered car to compete. The fastest cars racing up Pike’s Peak these days are all EVs.

So for the OP, yes, EVs are a thing. There is a lot to consider, but an EV might be right for you. When you are looking at EVs, you have to consider battery life and the rather significant cost of battery replacement. But it is something to seriously consider these days.

12

All good points here…

Yeah, I should’ve been better about maintaining it, first of all, but nothing ever lit up (in terms of engine lights and such) so I thought it was fine. I actually didn’t know that spark plugs were a consumable… stupid me. That’s on me. If I keep the car, I’ll definitely be better about maintenance from now on.

The fender-bender was the other party’s fault and I actually did get an insurance payout for it, but I kept the money instead of getting the work done. It was just some bumper damage. I didn’t care about cosmetics — I just put some giant band-aid stickers over the holes — and I figured I’d never get back the full retail cost of those repairs anyway even if I sold the car.

Hmm.

I think a slight complication here is that I barely drive this car anymore. I used to take it across the country and back, which is how it racked up the existing miles. But since my partner got her brand-new Solterra, we use that for all the roadtrips and shared outings now. The Crosstrek mostly just sits in the driveway now. On average it’s driven less than 10 mi/week, sometimes much less, and sometimes there are multiple weeks in between it seeing any use at all.

I don’t know if that makes the maintenance situation any better or worse. On one hand, the minimal usage would presumably mean that mileage-based maintenance would be needed much less frequently from now on. On the other hand, there are also age-related things that are slowly giving out — mostly various rubber gaskets/weatherstrips and a few rusty bolts and such, nothing too bad.

But it also means that the Crosstrek is now just an inferior copy of the Solterra :sweat_smile: We didn’t intend to end up with two cars this similar — it would’ve been nice to have one tiny EV for in-town trips and a bigger PHEV SUV for longer trips — but alas, it just didn’t play out that way because the fire forced us to shop for a replacement sooner than was ideal. I didn’t expect to have to consider replacing the Crosstrek anytime soon, but the oil change shop let me know that the coolant and transmission fluids were nasty and really needed replacement. That was the trigger for taking it to the mechanic for a detailed inspection. Now I wonder what else I’d been neglecting… we’ll know by next week :thinking:

It’s a tricky situation… for a few grand, I could probably keep the Crosstrek going for another few years. But it’s also more car than I really need anymore, and it gets pretty bad mileage by modern standards (20-25 MPG depending on what accessories it has on). Between gas and oil changes and maintenance, I just wonder if it makes sense to keep dumping money into it. It’s not obviously a “yes” or “no” answer at this point, which is what makes the decision more difficult. I could argue myself into taking either approach…

Conversely, for not a whole lot more money, I could swap it for a used FWD EV instead, put some snow tires on that, and use that for the minor in-town trips. We’d still have the Solterra for any outings, but that would mean we’d no longer have a gas car at all. Maybe not a big deal, but would make the occasional longer roadtrip harder — we’d have to rent something, probably, given the lack of charging stations en route to our usual destination. But that’s only once a year.

I briefly considered using this as an excuse to upgrade to a bigger gas or PHEV SUV instead, which would be fantastic for road trips, but one, they’re super expensive, and two, that would put me back into the same situation, of having “too much” car for the rest of the year that just mostly sits in the driveway but still requires expensive maintenance and consumables. It just doesn’t make sense to me to choose a car for the very occasional “extreme” use once a year, rather than the much more mundane day-to-day.

Hell, if they still made the ELF semi-enclosed electric trikes, I’d probably just get one of those:

It would be perfect for my needs, and definitely cheaper than maintenance.

In Europe, Fiat makes the Topolino, which would be perfect:

But alas, it will not be offered in the US (and tops out at about 25 MPH anyway, which is too slow for our roads).

So many variables… sigh. I guess, really, I need to separate the two considerations more clearly… whether to replace the existing car should be independent of which car to replace it with. But it’s hard to, because ultimately it all boils down to “how much utility would I get for how many dollars a year”, considering maintenance, fuel, insurance, car payments, etc. The projected total cost of ownership over the next 5-10 years seems like a complicated calculus problem that I don’t really know how to plot…

I’m kinda half-hoping the mechanic will come back next week and tell me “actually, it needs like $10k of work…”, in which case that repairs would exceed the value of the car itself and make the decision simple. It’s this middle ground that’s hard to reason around :sweat_smile:

13

You know, putting this all down in writing made me realize there’s a third option: in addition to either repairing or replacing the car, I could just… sell it altogether and not have a second car?

If I just put the money I’d normally spend on a car, say $100/mo or so between insurance, gas, and maintenance, into a fund and just very occasionally take a Lyft, I’d probably still come out ahead. We’d still have the one car for any longer outings, which I can also share with my partner on weekdays where I need a car. I work from home and she only works like 2 miles away, so I could easily drop her off and pick her up. Hmm…

Slightly inconvenient, but seems way more responsible, cheaper, better for the environment, all that jazz.

14

Let’s just say the average life of a car is 8 years. The price of an average car is $30,000. The amount you spent per year (minus maintenance) is approximately $4000. Unless your really worried, as long as you spend less than that it’s fine keeping your old car

15

Well, that part (the purchase cost) is easy enough to figure out. It’s the unpredictability of future maintenance that’s harder to estimate. I think you’d need a statistic model, per car model, to figure that out, no?

e.g. between years 8-15, other Crosstrek owners typically spend $X, and another $Y from years 15-20, etc.

And there’s also gas and electricity prices (and their increasing volatility) to figure in, too. It’s like one giant spreadsheet :frowning: I’m pretty good at daydreaming, not so good at mathing…

EDIT: It’s possible that all those costs will add up to $4k/year, some years, but probably not consistently $4k/year for 8 straight years in a row — maybe that’s what you mean?

16

Maybe it’s time to sell the Crosstrek? It’s never good for a vehicle to be sitting, barely used. You could buy a used 1st generation Nissan Leaf EV car. It’s a BEV, fully electric. That’s what my wife got 6 years ago, a used 2012 Nissan Leaf, when her VW Jetta got totaled. She really loves that Nissan Leaf! It has very little range, only 50 miles on its old battery, but it only cost $5K and she doesn’t need a lot of range. She plugs it into the house 120V line overnight and it’s always ready to go for her.

No maintenance whatsoever. We bought a set of tires, and that’s it. Maybe a set of wiper blades every couple of years.

17

Another factor to consider is if you enjoy working on cars.

I currently own the following: kit car made from a 1974 Pinto, 1998 Saab 900SE, 2000 Ford F-150, 2001 Toyota Corolla, 2002 Jeep Liberty, 2002 Mazda Miata, two 2005 Saab 9-5s, 2006 BMW Z4, and a 2007 Saturn Ion. With the exception of the Z4, I paid less than $3K for each, w/ cash.

Every weekend my son and I are working on them. We do it all: engine swaps, brakes, head gaskets, suspension, air conditioning, etc. A couple weeks ago we replaced the U-joints on the F-150’s driveshaft. On the lift right now is the (held-together-by-rust) Jeep. We are replacing the exhaust system and O2 sensors on it. Each vehicle always needs something done to it.

Does it make financial sense? Probably not. While I don’t have any car payments, tools and parts are not cheap. Why so many vehicles? Because this “vehicular lifestyle” requires multiple backups. Why do it? Two reasons: 1) It is a hobby my son and I enjoy practicing; we learn a lot, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment when we are able to fix something. 2) It is quality time with my son. This is the most important reason for me. If my son moved away, I’m not sure if I would continue with it.

18

Hmm. You know, I didn’t very much like that car when I first drove one (friend had one), and it’s absolutely terrible as an only car… but as a second, rarely-driven in-town car? It might be just the thing.

You have a point there. I’ll take a look. Heck, the Crosstrek might even be worth more than that, so I may still come out ahead…

Sadly, not really. I generally enjoy tinkering with things, but for some reason never really got into cars. Maybe if I were rich and had a big garage and parts and a mechanized jack and all that… but otherwise it just seems like a rather inaccessible hobby? I also hate grease in all its forms, so that’s probably not a good combo :sweat_smile: If I had infinite money for the workshop of my dreams, I’d probably try to build out my own camper van interior out of wood, but I’d leave all the mechanical parts to someone else…

Got to admit that’s pretty cool. It does sound like quality time.

My old man was never the hands-on type, sadly, and in fact I think he considered it beneath him. I don’t share that attitude, thankfully, but well… let’s just say I never picked up any tinkering skills from him.

Good on you and your son. I think there’s so much more that goes into such an experience than just having a working car again… like you said, the sense of accomplishment, the practice of patience and perseverance and problem-solving… lucky you!

19

Exactly. Last year the maintenance costs on my vehicle exceeded $2000, but that’s going to happen occasionally.

20

That is exactly our situation. It works for us. My wife loves that Leaf. I’m not a fan of it, I don’t care for its styling (never did, never will) and also I wish my wife would have a little more range, but I can’t talk her out of it!