Anyone ever break down your cost to maintain by the mile?
I just did this for my 97 900S with 220,000 miles and I came up with
If you do the math you will see that I spent nearly $11,000 USD on maintenance. This includes parts, labor, oil changes, etc. All repair and maintenance. Seems kind of high to me considering that I paid 24K for the car brand new.
I noticed a trend where the car seems to need about $1000 of service every 30,000 miles (approximately).
John
I think I am in about the same situation. I bought the car at 80K miles.
50K miles later the transmission went out: $2,000 (with clutch, etc.). 20K miles later, the fuel pump went out: $750. Wear items such as tires, battery, struts, brakes, filters aren't even included in this tally.Walt Kienzle
1991 9000T, 154K miles
Call that three pence a mile, which is certainly not excessive.
Hmm. Not really. If the car is now worth say $4,000 you've "paid" (lost) $24,000 on it, twice the service costs.
What are your other costs? Fuel? Depreciation? Finance, if applicable? Road duty / plates / tags? These should put the service costs into perspective.
And true of all cars - that is, depreciation is a daily cost.
You also have to compare it to other cars along with initial investment, opportunity cost, etc. Otherwise it is meaningless.
EPA mileage for the manual "S" is 21 mpg city / 29 highway, so, assuming 25 mpg at current national average price of $2.99/gallon, fuel would be 11.96 cents/mile (with your mileages, you probably did more highway driving and this overestimates your fuel cost).
You paid $24k, and Edmunds says a "clean" 900 with 220k miles has a trade-in value of $1319, so your depreciation is 10.31 cents/mile (ignoring finance costs or whatever).
I'll assume $1,000 insurance per year for 10 years, or about 4.55 cents/mile.
Your maintenance (including tires?) of 4.95 cents/mile brings the total to 31.77 cents per mile (ignoring capital costs, licenses, time value of money, washes, and anything not in your 4.95 cents) for a total cost of $69,883.
The IRS deduction for business use this year is 44.5 cents, so $97,900 to drive an "average vehicle" (whatever that is), or $28,017 more than you paid. Granted, your mileage is pretty high so you'd have a good shot at beating the averages in anything, but less than 5 cents per mile is incredibly good, especially since it includes the high-mileage phase of the car's life...is this the first car you've owned or something?
replies to user k.l.bailey at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
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