Hi everybody, I own two cars. One is mine (VW Jetta, 2002, 85000 miles) The other belongs to my wife (Saab 93, 2007, 40000). We love both cars, so the question is where should we put more miles. In the older one and keep the new one with less miles or in the new one until the are both about the same? Thank you, all best
If you’re asking from the point of view of maximizing the money you’ll eventually receive from selling both cars, I can’t say, but you could get a rough idea by going to the Edmunds and KBB web sites, distributing the same mileage differently across the two cars, and seeing what the current values are.
If you do run the miles up on the Saab to catch up to the VW, keep in mind that you’ll probably end up needing to replace two cars at roughly the same time at some point in the future. Not everyone plans for that financially.
I wouldn’t worry about it. The miles component of the used car value is pretty small. One other factor - the Saab, while newer, will likely depreciate extremely fast because of the problems the company is having. Unless you’re planning on selling soon, the impact of miles driven will be negligable. Better to keep both cars maintained by the book, and drive them a long time.
Personally, I would sell the SAAB or trade it in pronto. SAAB as a company is either going to disappear completely or be sold to the Chinese or Indians. Good luck finding parts and qualified mechanics then.
The fact that Saab is in “limbo” makes the answer more complex. Resale values of Saabs are low so that would tells me to run up the miles on the Saab as it won’t do much to harm the already low resale value. The problem with that is that repairing the Saab might get dicey if in running up the miles it needs more repairs.
Anyway I’d run up the miles on the Saab.
Put as many miles on the Saab as possible, since it will likely not be repairable in the future and at present has extremely low resale value. The VW will be repairable well into the future.
In other words, your Saab has a very short remaining “shelf life”. Use it up!
But remember an '02 Jetta isn’t going to be worth a lot, low or high miles.