I think your second scenerio is probaby the most cost effective, especially if you are paying for a mechanic to do the preventive work. This is assuming you aren’t incurring other costs for having a broken down vehicle (like not being able to get to work) – which is true if you have a second car to drive at those times when the first car is being repaired.
My philosophy – I do the work myself on my car – is to do the routine preventive maintenance that is easy to do, like oil and filter changes every 7500 miles, air filter& spark plugs and ignition rotor every two years, check all the fluid level and top off if required 4 times a year. All that other stuff beyond the oil and filter changes isn’t really much more work than only doing the oil and filter, since you have to get under the car for the oil and filter anyway. And the two-year stuff has to be done anyway, to pass the biannual emissions test here in Calif. Beyond that, I just fix stuff as it wears out or it breaks.
Many, but not all parts will give some type warning they are needing replacing before they go completely if you pay attention to the way the car drives, runs, and sounds it makes that gives you plenty of time to get them repaired prior to be stranded on the side of the road.
In spite of what maintenance should be done on a vehicle, I’m amazed how many people I see who do little to no regular maintenance.
And yet they are very satisfied with the life they get from their cars (regardless of what I or others think).
If automobile dealers’ only recourse in a defaulted contract was to demand the car be returned and when returned the debt cancelled, plus limit automobile loans to 3 years, how would automobile marketing change? How would automobiles change?
Doing the required mantenance will get you nearly 400,00 miles of life, not 200,000. Not doing anything may seize up the engine at 60,000 miles and maybe 100,000 miles. In other words, the cost of a replacement engine and transmission will pay for the cost of over half a million miles of good manitenance.
This is really a no-brainer. On the other hand there are those who lease cars (sales or business types) and do little or no manitenance for 3 years; just oil changes. The economics here are different, and the poor schmuck who buys one of these cars later will be picking up the pieces for the next 100,000 miles.
Investing in preventative maintenance is like buying insurance. Money is spent in advance as a hedge against the cost of an unplanned failure. The value of preventative maintenance can only be weighed against the costs incurred when the vehicle fails. For someone who makes a living using their car time lost due to a breakdown has a higher cost than for someone, like me, who is retired. Since the failure will be unpredictable the place of the failure has an effect on the cost. A timing belt failure in midtown Manhattan on the day the President addresses the UN will be more costly than if it happens in a Walmart parking lot. There are liability costs. Say a tie rod breaks and you run over a fire hydrant in front of Macy’s on the opening day of their spring sale week as opposed to taking out the side of your garage. There is safety. A brake failure coming down Pikes Peak will have a different cost than if you are rolling through rural Kansas. Last, and I think most important, is your responsibility to the people you share the road with. Personally, it doesn’t matter much to me if your wheel breaks off in the middle of the Mohave with no water and no cell service because you didn’t replace that noisy bearing. If you take out a family on the freeway the money saved on deferred maintenance won’t be worth much. Like insurance the costs and benefits of preventive maintenance must be weighed against your risks and needs, my philosophy, better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, mileage alone is a poor measure of overall longevity. As an example, a car that spends its life in New York city is going to have a different life than one traversing the open expanses of Kansas. They may last the same number of years but their accumulated mileage is going to be quite different.
A car driven in arid parts of Arizona is going to last a heck of a lot longer than one driven 4 months out of the year in salt slush. The latter may not matter how good you take care of the drivetrain, it’ll rust out from under you regardless.
There’s also a big difference between performing “required maintenance” and proactively replacing parts before they fail. In the first three years of life, most cars require very little maintenance beyond fluid and filter changes.
Using a broad brush is likely to have a lot of exceptions…