For me old beaters will always come out ahead because my daily round trip is only 4 miles and i enjoy older cars. New cars are boring too me but if i had to drive 200 miles a day it may be worth the new car for that hassle alone.
Im taking a few years off of buying, fixing and selling/trading to spend more time with my family but i still cant bring myself to drive a new car. Purely personal choice thay fits my life.
The only time buying new has made sense to me was when I was driving 200-300 miles per day, and doing it in a 9-year old Mercury Villager with 80k on it. Replaced it with a brand-new Fit Sport and the fuel savings alone more than covered the car payment & increase in insurance. We still have the Fit, now with 178k on it, and while I've not kept a running account of TCO it's been very cheap to maintain.
java230 wrote:ProDarwin wrote: Interest earnings alone on the cost of a new car would pay for all of my fuel, insurance, and repairs on my DD. Eventually I'll get tired of having an old car and get something newer even though it isn't the best choice financially.Interest rates are crazy low at the moment.... Over 5 years I will pay a grad total of $662 interest on our new car.
I'm paying 1% on the Fiat, 1.9% on the Buick. They best I could find on a used car was 3.9%. The Buick brand new worked out a little less than $10 a month more that a used Cruze at the same dealer.
Wall-e wrote:java230 wrote:I'm paying 1% on the Fiat, 1.9% on the Buick. They best I could find on a used car was 3.9%. The Buick brand new worked out a little less than $10 a month more that a used Cruze at the same dealer.ProDarwin wrote: Interest earnings alone on the cost of a new car would pay for all of my fuel, insurance, and repairs on my DD. Eventually I'll get tired of having an old car and get something newer even though it isn't the best choice financially.Interest rates are crazy low at the moment.... Over 5 years I will pay a grad total of $662 interest on our new car.
Exactly, used rates were 3%+, if you want a newer used car, you need a lot of cash sitting around. We ended up a .9% with nothing down.
Wall-e wrote:java230 wrote:I'm paying 1% on the Fiat, 1.9% on the Buick. They best I could find on a used car was 3.9%. The Buick brand new worked out a little less than $10 a month more that a used Cruze at the same dealer.ProDarwin wrote: Interest earnings alone on the cost of a new car would pay for all of my fuel, insurance, and repairs on my DD. Eventually I'll get tired of having an old car and get something newer even though it isn't the best choice financially.Interest rates are crazy low at the moment.... Over 5 years I will pay a grad total of $662 interest on our new car.
I think what ProDarwin was saying is that the money he would spend on a new car is earning enough interest to buy and maintain a beater without touching the capital.
I can fix up an older car and enjoy it. I've done it over and over and over again for shallow outlay and not much upkeep money but a lot of my time.
I can fabricate one from scratch, tube chassis one out for racing... whatever I've wasted a lot of time on that as well.
I'm buying a new truck this time around. I'll play with cars and bikes and old lathes and things... but I have no room in my life for wasting time keeping transportation and utility items running. If it's not fun to wrench or fab at it... I'm not doing it. The thing that enables all the other things will have a bumper to bumper warranty and a maintenance plan. It will be 100% reliable or it will be replaced.
You reach a certain age where it dawns on you that you can ALWAYS make more money but time is finite and you can't make one second more than you have right now. I don't want to be changing oil when the sand runs out of the hour glass. Riding a wheelie thru a gauntlet of angry grizzly bears... maybe.
We do essentially do the "one nice car" thing. It's just that our definition of nice is 10 years old and 150k miles. The '03 Vibe is nearing 200k miles and soldiering along as my wife's primary driver 'around town' which is about a 50 mile radius. It needed about $500 of work early this year but that should string it along for another few years. It has been replaced for long trips by the '06 Mazda3 with 160k but the aim is to pile miles on the more disposable Vibe first. Whenever it becomes unreliable the Vibe will be dragged out back and shot, the Maz3 will become "wife's daily car" and the search will be on for an '08-'10 with 100-150k for the next "nice vehicle". And so on.
In the meantime this arrangement allows me to own a 'screw-around' car that I can take apart for a few days at a time with no consequences. Right now that role is being occupied by (2) Miatas. This redundancy also meant when the Vibe ate a clutch, it wasn't a $1200 crisis, it was just me driving a Miata for a month while friends and I did the stupid clutch for about $250 in parts whenever we got around to it.
Old works for those that are physically able, have the time, and the parts are available, and the knowledge is there. So young single guys can have old cars.
When you get older you start making more money and would rather DRIVE a car then Work on it in your spare time (which you have little of because you are making more money and whatever that method is, requires more of your free time, including family time.) Old guys=new cars. Single guys= old cars. I'm 31, make about 60k a year, sometimes work more than full time, have wife but no kids. I have an '85 celica getting the 1uz transplant. I have no time to deal with rust, I hate stuck bolts that wear my arms out. Body work seems like a pain. I just want to have a v8 powered car. At this point, I'd trade straight up for a Miata that needs nothing.
Duke wrote: I think what **ProDarwin** was saying is that the money he would spend on a new car is earning enough interest to buy and maintain **and fuel** a beater without touching the capital.
Bingo & fixed. Although to their point, interest rates are so low I would't put that much cash toward a new ride anyway. So really, its much more complicated math that ultimately results in my beater DD being way way way cheaper.
But new cars sure are nice by comparison.
Duke wrote: I think what **ProDarwin** was saying is that the money he would spend on a new car is earning enough interest to buy and maintain a beater without touching the capital.
When $35k (avg new car price) is earning 3% return annual you are at the point of maintaining a car you already have. You still have to buy the car so you would have to have more money in somewhere with that return, a greater return, or wait longer but it is possible to do that provided you can guarantee the required return.
I can never muster the stomach to do that - when I get a chunk of change I take a chunk of principal out of the mortgage or pre-tax it into a fund where I can't get to it until I retire.
Last I checked, buying a 2 year old car for cash and selling it when it was 5 years old, was hard to beat as the low buck low stress motoring experience. A two year old vehicle will not incur the new car depreciation hit, the car will still retain some of the blush of youth without being soperfect that you have to go through the "first scratch" angst, and at the end, it will still have a residual value close to half of what you paid for it. Plain vanilla cars like Camries and Buicks work the best for this ploy, stay away from anything luxury.
I play a variation of that game with the DD. I buy a new car that I can afford to pay cash for. Since maintenance and repairs does not scare me, I keep it for ten years . After ten years I have amortized the thing to zero, scrap it and repeat.
Huckleberry wrote: I can never muster the stomach to do that - when I get a chunk of change I take a chunk of principal out of the mortgage or pre-tax it into a fund where I can't get to it until I retire.
That's basically what I do (invest it toward retirement). That's why I'll never get a new car. The investment return example was just to illustrate my answer to the original question of "Which is cheaper in the long run?"
I bought a ~14 year old car for $3K with 100k miles on it. Now 5 years later I have a 19 year old car worth $1.5-2K with 165k miles on it.
Its funny how that seems extreme to some, yet pales in comparison to some other guys on here that put 300k more miles on a car after purchasing it for $500 
With an average of two inspections a day to get to and 40-50k miles a year new or near new is almost required.
When I switched jobs I had two weeks before the company car went away. Ended up buying new because I couldn't find anything in the cash range with less than 100k miles and would still get decent mpg.
The wife drives about 10 miles a day so the 12 year old Subaru works just fine. If it needs work we can rent or work around the lack of a car.
Different situations and different strokes...
dropstep wrote: For me old beaters will always come out ahead because my daily round trip is only 4 miles and i enjoy older cars.
if my commute was only 4 miles.. I would be bicycling to work on a regular basis. I could do it now at 12 miles away, but I would get killed on the one stretch of road I have to use to get there
I've had the car payments lately just from being lazy more than anything and not wanting to do the work but I'm seriously looking at dumping it, buying another decent middle priced car and a motorcycle for the rides when the daily is down. We are close enough to work now that the wife is going to ride her bike 3 days a week as is and if needed, I could ride to work as well. Not quite as easy as her by still doable.
I mean, if you're looking at "brand new $20k car on loan" vs "$10k used car plus maintenance," if you do the oil changes and repairs yourself (a really good manual helps), my friend has found out that even a W164 Mercedes ML500 is cheaper to buy, maintain, and insure than his sister's Jetta.
G_Body_Man wrote: I mean, if you're looking at "brand new $20k car on loan" vs "$10k used car plus maintenance," if you do the oil changes and repairs yourself (a really good manual helps), my friend has found out that even a W164 Mercedes ML500 is cheaper to buy, maintain, and insure than his sister's Jetta.
Let me talk to you about Mercedes........
At one time, I thought there was a middle ground on this - that is, the $3000 car that would last 3-4 years with nothing but routine maintenance.
That's why I bought my Acura. I figured that if/when I got bored of it, I could easily sell it for what I had into it to someone who was in the marked for the sort of car I just described.
Turns out, that market doesn't exist. I can either sell the car at a loss, or leave it in the garage until (maybe) it appreciates it for what it is.
My DD, though, is a $10k used Chevy Sonic. If I'm lucky, I can keep it for 6 years and sell it for a couple grand. Beats spending my free time fixing a DD.
In reply to mazdeuce:
The PO installed brand new air bags and a new compressor when he got it, which means so far, it's been
1 Hella D2S bulb - $135 shipped.
One set of Pirelli Scorpion Verde All Season Plus tires - $1100 M&B'd
2015 Navigation Update Disc - $240 shipped
Two oil changes, Mann Filters and Castrol Edge Euro Blend oil - $152 (oil on sale)
Two sets of Bosch Aerotwin front wiper blades - $120 (in stock locally)
$1747 for 18,000km and including a set of new tires retailing at $1100, and a $240 nav disc just because? Not bad at all for what it is. The tires will last for 5 years at his current rate of driving, so excluding the nav disc and amortizing the tires makes it $627 for the past year. Considering he bought in at $9500, that's still well over eight years before the buy-in and maintenance costs catch up to the buy-in on his sister's Mark 6 Jetta, and he pays $70/mo less for insurance.
I was mostly being silly in reference to my recent R63 issues. 
In reply to EvanR:
Wait, is this the 4door Integra I think I recall seeing? Yeah I'd pay 2500 for that and so would plenty of other folks who love that platform around here. Vegas isn't doing you any favors there.
RedGT wrote: In reply to EvanR: Wait, is this the 4door Integra I think I recall seeing? Yeah I'd pay 2500 for that and so would plenty of other folks who love that platform around here. Vegas isn't doing you any favors there.
Hm. I've offered free delivery to several buyers, but no takers.
mad_machine wrote:dropstep wrote: For me old beaters will always come out ahead because my daily round trip is only 4 miles and i enjoy older cars.if my commute was only 4 miles.. I would be bicycling to work on a regular basis. I could do it now at 12 miles away, but I would get killed on the one stretch of road I have to use to get there
Its hard to drop two 8 year olds off at school on a bike. I occasionally bike and really want another enduro but 4 wheels and 4 seats are required for 5 days a week.
You guys who dont like wasting your free time fixing or repairing your DD... how often do they need repairs? My DD has never left me stranded. Only once has it required a somewhat urgent repair (starter) in 5 years/65k miles.
I hate wasting time on bullE36 M3 chores/tasks, but my beater DD is a pretty minor time-sink all things considered. A house, any house is going to be exponentially worse. I'd spend a car payment on lawn service/home repairs long before I'd get a nice car (I really should do this).
I tell my GF that my truck isn't getting older, it's getting newer by the piece. 
In all seriousness though. My DD is an old beat up Chevy K2500 that was purchased specifically as a farm/ranch truck, and has outlived 3 newer used cars I've since bought for DD duty.
IMO, the key to DIY old car ownership is to take advantage of the LLT warranties from the chain stores. At this point, I've owned this truck long enough now that most of the parts under the hood are under warranty. Several of them have been swapped out more than once under warranty too.
At this point, I'd rather rebuild the motor/trans etc than literally buy into another truckload of problems I'm gonna have to shell out cash to take care of, and still possibly end up with a vehicle with a bad motor etc. some months later. (Like what happened with my last 3 used DD cars)
Ultimately, I don't care how anyone else chooses to pick/maintain a vehicle. I just know I prefer an older vehicle that's typically known for reliability with as little regular maintainable as possible.
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