Conspicuously Consumed

[billroper]

Yes, I know. You've heard some of this before. And here I am again.

I would really like to buy myself a new car. It has been 13 years since I replaced my car, which is roughly double the longest time that I have owned a car before.

However, I have my 2005 Ford Five Hundred which is in annoyingly good shape. It has 95K miles on it, four new tires last year, an aftermarket radio to support hands-free calling, and the only thing that I know is wrong with it is that the sunglasses holder in the overhead console broke so that I had to glue it back together, which means it will stay closed, but not if you try opening it again. (This could be fixed with a $35 part, but the install is just complex enough that I haven't bothered.)

I am not sure how long this car will run, but it shows no signs of wanting to stop. The whole thing was designed by the Volvo engineers who worked at Ford at the time and it wears like a Volvo.

If I had a friend who needed an (apparently) reliable car and was willing to pay a reasonable price for it with easy 0% seller financing, I would feel much better about buying myself a new car. But I hate to let this perfectly good car go off to someone that I don't know when the alternative is to not buy a new car and keep driving what I'm driving.

Decisions, decisions...

Comments

[hms42]

I know that feeling... I replaced a 17 year old Saturn in fall 2013. (I had gotten it new). It lasted about 2 more years for the 2nd owner who took it off the road for safety reasons.

(It definitely was the longest I have ever owned a car.)

[sibylle]

I know the feeling ... my current car is a VW Golf and it is 14 now. I got it back in 2006 and it’s been doing a fine job and just working ever since. While I would really like having a car with some more amenities (heated seats), the only thing that’s broken is the tape deck. So it feels both somewhat mean and also spendthrift to replace it when it’s not necessary.

[gorgeousgary]

Is this when we all get to talk about our aging but not-quite-dead-yet cars? Like my own 2005 Nissan Altima at 142K.

Though I have a sense I should probably start car shopping in the not too distant future.

[billroper]

See, my car only has 95K miles, so...

At 142K miles, I would start having a feeling of dread.

a nerd computes when to trade in a car

[patoadam]

I keep a spreadsheet with the purchase price of my car (a 2010 Toyota Highlander Hybrid) and all repair and maintenance costs, so that I can compute the average cost of ownership per year, which, after N years, is (purchase price)/N + (total cost of repairs and maintenance)/N. For simplicity, I ignore gas, insurance, inflation, the current market value of the car, and the greater utility of a new car. I plan to replace the car when the average cost of ownership per year starts to creep up. You can verify that this will occur when (purchase price)/N + average annual cost of repairs and maintenance over first N years < cost of repairs and maintenance in year N+1.

Given the age of your car and the purchase price of mine, two numbers that don't make sense together but that I will use because I know them, I find that (purchase price)/N = $3273. So it would take a pretty expensive repair to persuade me to replace my car, even after 13 years.

Ignoring the greater utility of a new car might not be smart. A new car that tells me when another vehicle is in my bind spot and gives me a bird's-eye view of obstacles near me when parking might help me avoid an accident. But I hope I can keep my car long enough so that my next car will be self-driving.