To ask when you should just buy a new car

[OldLadyInPolyester]

My car is 10 years old and has been costing me loads of money in repairs over the last couple of years. Bits of it just need replacing because of age / mileage. I've also broken down a fair few times which is annoying.

I'm not bothered about having a new, flashy car but I don't want to keep paying out loads of money. I keep hearing people say that they're just going to run their current car into the ground. What does this mean? Keep replacing bits until you can't any more? Or once expensive bits need replacing they get a new car?

So I suppose I'm asking at what point does it become better to buy a new car rather than getting the old one repaired?

My lovely car mechanic literally begged me to get a new car. In fact he refused to do any work on it the last time I took it in.

A decent garage should tell you when you're throwing good money after bad.

Only you can answer this as it depends on what you will replace it with! Obviously the idea is to replace it when the old one becomes more expensive to keep than the new option. I have just replaced my old car as it was breaking down and has been unreliable for the past few months. Lease deals are notoriously expensive and if you buy a ‘good’ car outright this is nearly always cheaper. x

Mine reached that stage after 15 really good years. Repaired a good few smaller bits over the course of a year or so but then something more major started to fail and I realised it was time.

Haven’t had to do a thing with my “new” (4 year old) car so far bar the usual annual service. It’s been really nice!

For me it would be as soon as I’ve had more than a couple of bills over £1000 I think but maybe it should come down to bills versus cars worth?

Generally when the cost of annual repairs (or any major repair) exceeds the part exchange value of the car it is best to get a new one.

However, I would add that if your car is diesel, get rid of it ASAP.

So I've spent probably around £1500 this year on repairs not including normal MOT and service costs. The car is worth about £3500. It's time isn't it? Family sized cars are bloody expensive though 😭

The idea that you need to replace it if the cost of repairs exceeds the value is a stupid fallacy because it's overly simplistic. If spending the money gives you a reliable car it can still be worth doing - and if you are thinking of replacing with an old car you could end up worse off.
Also the idea you should junk your car just because it's a diesel is stupid and massively wasteful and damaging to the environment.
We should all be keeping our cars for as long as possible for maximum environmental credentials since such a massive proportion of the total environmental burden of a car lies in the manufacture of it and of the processing of it as scrap.

Also - cars have massive differences in reliability between makes and models. Many of the "premium" cars like BMW, Audi, Land Rover etc have models with terrible reliability but sell well due to fashion.

The problem is I have no idea if my car is now going to keep going for another few years or keep costing me thousands. I'm clueless about cars!

I divide the amount I spend on a car by the number of years I’ve had it. If I scrapped the car that day then the answer to the calculation is the annual depreciation. I don’t mind one bill that is equivalent to the annual depreciation but as soon as it looks like I’ll be spending that in a year then I’ll replace the car.

My previous car cost £20k and I had it for 13 years which works out at just over £1500pa. I had a problem which I was quoted £1500 to fix but was told I’d have another £1000ish to spend in the next year or so based on age and mileage. I didn’t get the work done and got a new car instead.

It's unlikely that you'll get that size bill again in the next year or so.

Whether you get a new car is really a balancing act. Reliability and cost Vs need.

Our family has had a bad run of luck with old cars recently (15-20yrs old). I need to drive for work. We bought a new Dacia but will be paying for it for the next 4 years (about £450 a month). That would pay a lot of £3500 bills and doesn't cover servicing etc.

The price of 2nd hand cars atm is really high compared to a couple of years ago so for us it made more sense to buy a cheap new car with a warranty than to run the risk of another unknown 2nd hand car.

It depends what you've spent the money on
Tyres
Brakes
Alternator
Battery
Exhaust
These are things that need to be replaced periodically

If everything starts falling apart... get a new one

In my youth, I managed vehicle fleets for a giant corporation. And I am afraid you are wrong about it being a “stupid fallacy” to replace a vehicle when the repair costs exceed its value. It is actually a rule of thumb based on extensive analysis of the total costs incurred if you keep repairing an old car year after year vs the costs of getting a new one. As corporations are all about being cost efficient to maximise profit, I can say from experience that it is good rule and not overly simplistic.

Diesel vehicles continuing to run do more damage to the environment through NO2 and particulate emissions than would happen by scrapping them. They are a primary cause of the thousands of deaths every year due to air pollution. You can’t count the environmental cost of their production as that is a sunk cost and in no way justifies the continued driving of a high polluter. Why do you think the cost of diesel petrol is almost £2 per litre and many petrol stations aren’t even selling it? Because it is the type of petrol with the highest % of oil in it. And we are phasing out oil. If you hang on to a diesel car, it will be worthless very soon.

Timing chain last time. Time before was something about cylinders misfiring 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm scrapping my car in the immediate future. It had £700 worth of work needing done now, and its MOT due next month. Its 16 years old and I'm going to miss it so much!!

Lots of things to consider - is the body of the car generally good, not rusted etc? Have you kept it serviced? Modern cars could easily do 200k miles if really well looked after and the big things replaced as they come up.

How catastrophic is a breakdown or failure to start in your day to day life? For me it was an annoyance but with 2 small children or mobility issues or a long commute it'd have been wildly impractical.

Have any of the 'obvious'/common things been done on it? Clutch, radiator, suspension, etc? If you've done the obvious stuff and it's still falling to bits then it's probably time to say goodbye, if it's just a case of 'fix the radiator and it's otherwise largely okay' you could get a fair bit of life out of it.

Mainly I'd ask if you have a mechanic you trust (or know one). My uncle is a mechanic and he gave me the confidence to drive my shitheap old car for a lot longer than I'd have thought was okay because the things that kept going wrong were little niggly bits like a spark plug going, an oil leak, the starter motor. The car wasn't in terrible shape but from the amount of little bits going wrong I assumed it wasn't long for this world, but he reassured me. Once it really was absolutely not worth saving, he told me, which I was v grateful for!

Timing chain is probably good for another 10 years so I wouldn't panic about that. The only reason I would get rid of a car is if the bodywork was rusting out beyond repair.

Ours was 15 years old and had never ever let us down but was worth next to nothing . We said any repairs over £400 and we would scrap it as that could be £400 towards a new one and what if we spent say £500 then the clutch , for example went . (I had a thread on here when the decision was made for us as we forgot to put oil in and seized the engine up )

Im in a similar situation , OP.
My car is 15 years old, I started planning to get a new (maybe 3 years old) one at the beginning of last year but was waiting til I had the money, (later in the year) now I wish I had taken out a low interest loan as the price of second hand cars increased massively in that time!

I haven't done massive mileage for its age but it seems to need more regular trips to the garage and more things as advisories on the MOT.
DH is keen to get a hybrid car but we've already upped our budget once andhere few hybrid cars come up within that

Utter crap on both counts - what the hell is "diesel petrol" when it's at home?
The whole point of the total environmental costs is the sunk cost - you can never get that back. You are massively oversimplifying the case about Diesel pollution - many Euro 6 diesels have as low or lower NoX and particulate emissions as petrol and emit less co2 per mile as well. You really have no clue.

I don’t consider a 10 year old car to be old so, my new car is 14 years old v low mileage and no way would I think it was time to swap it out unless it was fatal. My old car was 17 years old and had hoped it would keep going for a while longer, I only scrapped it as the engine blew up 🤣.

Car prices are artificially inflated at the moment. Wait a little longer if you must get a new car... depreciation will be much worse than normal once the bubble pops!

Timing chain is unlikely to need doing again unless it's one of the notoriously bad ones like that BMW one at the back of the engine.
Cylinders misfiring sounds like coil packs - again unless the Renault ones that had a phase of being especially weak, unlikely to be needed again before the car is twice the age.

If you hang on to a diesel car, it will be worthless very soon.

Rubbish!

Im not bothered about it's age. I just need it to get from A to B. I don't want to keep spending thousands on it and it continue to be unreliable. Equally I worry about the environmental impact if getting a new car when potentially I could keep this one going. I was looking at electric vehicle lease schemes but I hear you would have to drive a new EV fir 15 years before you make up for the environmental impact of manufacture....