You may love it, you may hate it, but either way you've probably been through a lot together and parting can be difficult. Leaving emotional ties aside, is it better to keep your current vehicle, or get something new?
This is a situation that Blackfern members will be familiar with, as many of their customers arrive at the workshop with a long in the tooth, but trusted steed. The question will come into conversation, whether it's time to get something new, a question usually, tentatively, raised by the customer.
The answer is a difficult one to arrive at, and typically it all boils down to cost. However, for some people safety should be a key consideration. If you have a young family, and a 1-star safety rated car, then safety should far outweigh cost. It should bridge nostalgia too, though it seems that's a harder one to cross.
For most though, cost is the key consideration, and there are three aspects to the cost of an older car:
Most newer cars are more efficient, regardless of whether that's combustion-only, hybrid, or battery. That may reduce refuelling costs when the price per litre is high, but unless you're driving huge distances every year then you are unlikely to see significant savings, and not enough to justify a new purchase.
If savings at the pump or plug aren't going to justify a newer vehicle, then perhaps reliability will be the load that tips the scales. This is definitely a key consideration, because if your vehicle is in the garage more than out of it, well then it's obvious what has to happen. However, what if it's only an extra thousand dollars a year in maintenance? This is a more difficult question to answer, because newer cars can cost many thousands more, and there's no hard-fast rule that they will guarantee a trouble-free drive. There's a good argument that says you should be prepared from day one and put money aside every month for car maintenance, then what's left at the end of the year gets added to your new car fund.
Overall, unless it's costing huge dollars to repair, you're better off sticking with what you have. The caveat though is that you should be putting projected maintenance costs into a new car fund.
Finally, what about depreciation? When it's time to trade-in, has your vehicle depreciated to the point where it's cost you significantly? The reality is that as cars age they depreciate less. Most of the depreciation has happened within the first few years, and by the time a car is a decade old, then there's the chance you could buy it, and sell it just a few years later, without feeling any pinch of depreciation. Of course, at a decade old you are playing the chance game of vehicle reliability.
The above then suggests you should hold onto your vehicle for as long as you can unless it has become unreliable and is costing huge money or spends most of the time of the road. The extra costs are negated by the purchase price.
So, if you're keeping your vehicle for as long as you feasibly can, just be sure to visit a Blackfern member workshop to ensure it's well maintained. That'll hopefully save you the reliability costs, and help grow your new car pot.
