Friday, April 27, 2007

Even More Reason I Hate Owning (and Paying) for Cars

My first car was a manual 1991 Honda Civic 4-door-deathtrap, but it worked remarkably well and clocked in around 40mpg. The body gave out before the motor and I squeezed about 160,000 miles out of it before I was at the point when rust covered a greater portion of the body than paint. Thus, my rocky relationship with all things automotive began.

I'm not a "car" guy, nor am I "handy" in any sense of the word. If there is one thing I hate more than paying money to fix a car it is paying a shop or dealership to fix my car where I can have the pleasure of getting talked down to and screwed out of large sums of money all at the same time. The Digerati Life has a nice article on the true costs of automobile ownership. It adds up a whole lot faster than you might think and that isn't including gas.

The main things I got out of the article I guess weren't the focus of the post - but were interesting to me never the less.

  1. Mazda has the lowest total cost of ownership compared to other major car manufacturers at least for minivans.

  2. The total cost of maintaining your vehicle will run you about twice the cost you paid for it. Does this sound like a 30 year mortgage to anyone else? At least you can have some equity when things are said and done if you choose the house & write some of the interest off.
Head over to The Digerati Life to get the full story
Do You Really Know How Much It Costs To Own Your Car?