Thread: The truthful, honest cost of owning your vehicle.

For my 110, on a cash basis over the first twenty years of ownership, all costs, including purchase price, rego, insurance, repairs, fuel, tyres etc, and with no allowance for residual value.

$5396.40 per year, which averages out at $0.26.9/km

Most servicing has been done by myself, as have most repairs, and this will not have accurately accounted for all oil bought in bulk (although the engine oil I do not use this grade in anything else, so it should be properly accounted) and other workshop supplies not specifically bought for it. Current costs will be higher than this average - for example, a tyre I got this week cost $340 with tube, twenty years ago the same tyre was under $200, and rego and insurance seem to go up every year.

John

This is an interesting convo .....

I have some cars which will not depreciate ( as they are too old ) Will do some figgering ( fidgeting if figures ) when I get home ..

Originally Posted by jimr1

I suppose that there will be a formula for this somewhere . I would think that you have to start right at the beginning . Cost of the vehicle , plus on road , stamp duty , rego plates , insurance ect. Then is there Finance ? That will incur interest . So now you can start , The longer you have It the more It will depreciate , add to that the original cost on any loan is going up . Look at It over the fist year . The value has gone down , plus running costs for the year . Fuel plus anything else you've spent . Now you can start to do the sums . The second year will change , as will every other year until It only has scrap value . Luxury vehicles are even worse !!.. Jim

Guess what, the Chinese stock market crash has added another cost to owning a dunger! The spare Camry I kept for parts is now worth around 2/3 it was last week.

Interesting thread, I have had only two cars in the last twenty seven years. Volvo 265 GLE and the Defender 110. Both cars I did almost all my maintenance on, both cars probably had similar up time say 99% ( 3 days a year not available) I count a full day/night in the workshop as "not available". Fitting maxidrive difflock & axles, repairing engine damage caused by a mechanic, and fitting the VNT turbo is the only cases I can recall for the Land rover.

I maintained both cars mostly myself and din't worry about the cost of spares and consumables much, since i wasn't paying for labour, and followed the makers service interval. If in doubt about any parts I replaced them. Usually I did the services in blocks of a few hours so the car was available either in the morning or the afternoon. I used to keep records but got a bit lazy, but i usually worked on a maintenance budget average of $ 1000 per year, including tyres ( for about 10,000 kms /year, 10 c /km).
With rego and insurance costs . ( say 1500 per year in the early days , about 1 K per year now with only third party property, 10 c /km ), putting fuel aside I would now work on about, 20 c / Km. The volvo went from $17,000 to $2500 in about 12 years (175,000 kms, 9 c/km). The 95 defender has gone from $24,000 to $10,000 in 15 years, (2nd car ~ 100,000 kms, 14 c /km, the value might be more than that, it's not for sale). I think the trick is not to have a car that catches you by surprise with big unexpected bills. I like luxury but the thought of an unexpected $5000 or more repair bill is bit frightening.

hasn't every disco owner had a $5000 repair bill for something or other?

$5000 repair bill ? If I owned a disco it's market value would be less than that ..... and if it did genuinely need $5000 worth of part ........ I'd buy a smashed one and pull the parts from it for a fraction of the cost.

I'm in the same boat as the guys that do all there own work. Anything I own has already lost 99.925 percent of it's market value. So depreciation is negligible. However you have to pick the right car that sound so your not constantly repairing it to keep it on the road.

I do know I put staggering amounts money into the old Range Rover .... 99.99% of that money is straight into it's gas and petrol tanks

seeya,
Shane L.

Omitted from my costs was the opportunity cost of the capital. At 5% interest rate this amounts to $1250 per year, adding 6.25c/km, for a total of 33.24c/km.

For many vehicles the major costs will be the depreciation and the capital opportunity cost. The latter can get very high if interest rates climb, and this can easily become the major cost of ownership, although it is usually neglected.

Depreciation is usually the second highest cost of ownership, but can be minimised by buying second hand and keeping it a long time. The saving in doing this is almost always much greater than increased repair costs with older vehicles. (provided you look after them!)

John

Here's a very rare example that goes against the normal depreciation experiences.

I bought a new Isuzu County 110 in 1985 for $24,100 and sold it by tender 10 years later with 110,000 kms on it for $26,100.

During my 10 years of ownership, no major repairs were required and apart from regular servicing, all of which I did myself, and normal running costs (fuel, rego, insurance etc) the biggest expense was a set of tyres.

Without a doubt, the best Landy I've ever owned.