My vote is also for keeping the car instead of trading it off.
Something else to factor in is whether or not (99% chance not) the dealer is really giving you 6500 or 5000 and so forth.
What you’re really being given can be near impossible to determine during all of the hoopla over a trade-in.
A cell phone with 24 hour cab and towing companies programmed in makes a great backup to a possibly unreliable car. Heck, my auto insurance company offers a road side assistance plan for ~20 bucks a year. The chance of being stranded for long periods of time is practically nil.
I will give an example of a car that needed to be traded in. In 1999, we got wiped out in Austin on I-35. We rented a car and drove on to Iowa, where we finally found a nice looking 1989 Caravan with 120,000 miles on it. I had read on Cartalk that it is financially better to keep an old car running, so we went with that old car. We actually liked it.
But, within a year or two, if we drove from McAllen to Amarillo, we’d call a mechanic when we got there. If we drove to Iowa, we’d call a mechanic when we got there. When we drove back to Amarillo, we’d call a mechanic when we got there. When we drove back to McAllen, we’d call a mechanic when we got there.
And, no matter what we or a mechanic did, the car overheated at 70 mph, period. And, yes, I certainly knew all the possible cause. There was a service bulletin on the MAP or MAF, I forget what it was called on that car that could cause that. The real problem is the Caravan has a toy radiator on it.
So, finally we admitted it was not cheaper to run an old car, and got a new 2002 Sienna. At 70 mph and 5,000 rpm climbing a hill in the Hill Country at 100 degrees, that heat gauge does not move. 178,000 miles and few problems until now, though I think there may be a computer problem, I put on another posting about some lights coming on when the car is started and going out when I restart it.
To me, at 178,000 miles an occasional repair, even a real repair which this one may be, still isn’t much more than maintenance. If it gets to be like the Caravan, it will be traded.
I also agree with the above. Keeping it is almost always cheaper than trading it in.
… unless it’s a Caravan.
Yep, older Caravans are pretty well known for major transmission problems.
From my perspective, cost is only one aspect of car buying. Pleasure and piece of mind are others. Contrary to what some people seem to think, there is nothing wrong or significantly uneconomical to buying a new car. It is simply a personal decision on your part based on your needs, wants, and economic situation.
You drive a significant number of miles each year so you have to decide if you will either trade cars every 3-4 years or keep a car 8-10 years. I commuted 100 miles a day and started out driving new cars. I found I didn’t like having a family car a few years old with 80K miles on it so I started buying work cars with 100K and driving them to 3-400K. Once you get over 100K though, the value of the car will be so reduced that it will be more advantageous to you to continue driving it and fixing it.
I used to track my repair and maintenance costs for each 10K miles from brand new to 2-300K to see where the major cost advantage was. Repair costs are not lineal but rather cluster themselves. You can go to 150K and have virtually no repair costs, and then have a head gasket, transmission, etc. that will cost $2-3000. You would have been better off to get rid of it just before a major repair, but these cannot be predicted, just that there will be some. Of course it is cheaper to fix a car because you are only paying for the repair at that point, not the cost of the car itself.
So if you don’t mind driving a car with 3-400K on it, that will be cheaper, provided you do your own work. If you do mind driving a high mileage car, or if it is your only car, and you are economically stable, go for the new car. For people that say it is always cheaper to fix a car than buy a new one, probably haven’t had one fail on them at 10 below zero or the cost factor would be only one factor and maybe not even the major one. For someone that drives every day, you need a comfortable and dependable car.