Quote:
Originally Posted by RabidRat
Someone should build a website that lets you project the total cost of ownership of a vehicle, over years & kms of ownership as inputs:
-MSRP minus the residual resale value
-typical aggregate maintenance cost (including replacement tire or oil cost because maybe this particular model is using something weird)
-typical aggregate repair cost
-typical insurance cost
-typical fueling cost
All this data is available, just nobody's slapped it all together yet.
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The really detailed amounts down to the dollar really only matters if you are buying a Rav4 or CRV comparison and trying to figure out which one is going to give you more trouble free and low cost mileage.
Once you get into the luxury brands, it's become more of an emotional purchase. Yes badge buying makes it an emotional purchase.
When I bought the X5, the purchase price mattered, but that's because an equivalent Cayenne is worth 30k more. Insurance cost really didn't matter because compared to daycare costs it was just a small part of life. Saving $300 a year only pays for a year of daycare.
A portion of it was "we need a bigger car" and a portion of it was "I don't want to pay so much for gas" which justified the PHEV part of the equation. We weren't going to buy a Highlander hybrid at roughly the same cost of entry but with significantly cheaper maintenance moving forward - that part was emotional.