Folks, My wife has a 98 RX300 with ~70K miles. It has been fully serviced according to specifications and we have had no serious problems. I don't know much about cars ... but I have a couple of basic questions:
1) How many miles can we put on this car before the "wheels fall off?". How much longer can I drive it before the cost of ownership becomes more than its value? Does anyone have experience on RX300's with high mileage? What problems/costs can we expect? What is end of life mileage?
2) This may be a general question about all cars ... which is more "economic" .... to trade in a car and buy a new one while there is equity in the car or drive it to destruction and then buy a new one with no trade in residue on the original?
If you live in an area where corrosion is not a huge issue (e.g, not in the rust belt), most cars can be driven indefinitely. Maintenance and repair costs will continue to increase, but for most areas, there is no practical upper limit on how long you can drive a car.
Except for collectables, cars do reach the point where the cost of repairs exceeds the value of the car. But most cars hit the junkheap long before this though - the owner loses interest in the car, stops getting things repaired, and simply drives it into the ground.
If you take reasonable care of an RX300, perform routine maintenance, don't get involved in collisions, etc., it should be economically viable to drive it to 300K-500K, but there are lots of variables. I have a friend with a Ford Explorer with 500K and it is a reliable daily commuter. But he's got a long commute and he stacks on the miles - calendar time is often times more important than mileage. Long-term, things like corrosion, electrical system deteoriation, accessory glitches, instrument failures, safety system failures, etc. take more of a toll than mileage wear items that can be replaced.
If you're looking for the lowest total cost of ownership, your best bet is to buy a new (or good shape used car) and drive it forever, or as long as you can before something really expensive requires repair. The cost of routine maintenance and repairs is almost always less than the depreciation you'll incur on a new car. Having said this, older cars tend to require more TLC and you run a higher risk of breakdowns,. And today's cars are vastly improved in nearly all areas. So most people replace a new car long before it is worn out - they just want something new and don't want to bother doing the repairs, even if this is the cheaper way to go. IOW, there is more to car ownership than simple economics.
If you live in an area where corrosion is not a huge issue (e.g, not in the rust belt), most cars can be driven indefinitely. Maintenance and repair costs will continue to increase, but for most areas, there is no practical upper limit on how long you can drive a car.
Except for collectables, cars do reach the point where the cost of repairs exceeds the value of the car. But most cars hit the junkheap long before this though - the owner loses interest in the car, stops getting things repaired, and simply drives it into the ground.
If you take reasonable care of an RX300, perform routine maintenance, don't get involved in collisions, etc., it should be economically viable to drive it to 300K-500K, but there are lots of variables. I have a friend with a Ford Explorer with 500K and it is a reliable daily commuter. But he's got a long commute and he stacks on the miles - calendar time is often times more important than mileage. Long-term, things like corrosion, electrical system deteoriation, accessory glitches, instrument failures, safety system failures, etc. take more of a toll than mileage wear items that can be replaced.
If you're looking for the lowest total cost of ownership, your best bet is to buy a new (or good shape used car) and drive it forever, or as long as you can before something really expensive requires repair. The cost of routine maintenance and repairs is almost always less than the depreciation you'll incur on a new car. Having said this, older cars tend to require more TLC and you run a higher risk of breakdowns,. And today's cars are vastly improved in nearly all areas. So most people replace a new car long before it is worn out - they just want something new and don't want to bother doing the repairs, even if this is the cheaper way to go. IOW, there is more to car ownership than simple economics.
If you're willing to keep fixing them, cars can go a long time-- 20 years or more, or half-million miles. Rust may be what ultimately makes them unrepairable (or at least not worth the trouble).
It's nearly always cheaper to keep driving the car. At least to my way of thinking, the issue is not the value of your current car, but rather the cost to buy a new one. By the time a car's 10+ years old it's probably worth only a few thousand bucks, and most importantly, it's not depreciating that quickly any more. If you figure that the capital cost of buying a new car is, say, $500/month (ie what you'd have to pay in loan payments-- even if you "loaned" the money to yourself by taking it out of the bank), then as long as you're spending less than $6000 per year in maintenance it's cheaper to fix your old car (assuming that a new car doesn't cost anything to maintian). It's very hard to spend that much in maintenance, so it's nearly always to keep on truckin'. So the deciding factor more often becomes 1) whether the car has become unreliable to the point where, maintenance notwithstanding, you can't count on it to complete a given trip successfully, 2) whether the hassle of constantly taking it to the shop is getting to be a real nuisance or (most commonly) 3) whether you're just plain tired of your current car.
Folks, Mark, Mark, Larry, Many, many thanks for taking the time to respond back to my postings. Your thinking has given me much to consider. I wanted to say THANK YOU so much for taking the time to provide such thoughtful and clear responses. These are MOST appreciated.
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