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I recently calculated the last 6 years of owning my truck has cost me about $84 a month exclusively in repairs and general maintenance. (Not including gas!)

Seems like a lot? Well, when I initially bought this truck in early ‘97, my monthly payments were something like $267 a month. So keeping this truck at its current average monthly maintenance costs seems more cost effective than getting into a new auto loan. And, overall, there aren’t any ‘major’ issues with it other than lots of body rust.

But, I find one maintenance issue after another to become rather tiresome to say the least! So here I am toying with the idea of just upgrading to something much newer. But, I work in an automotive environment and I don’t feel a whole heck of a lot of trust in newer vehicles. They’re very cheaply engineered with very cheap materials. And though new, they often come with a variety of their own ‘new’ maintenance issues.

So I’m curious what everyone else feels about purchasing newer vehicles and at what point does average monthly maintenance costs become too much?

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As long as marginal cost is less than marginal value.

If it costs me $1,000 to keep it running another year and that cost is less than new car payments, I'm patching and driving the tank.

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When I start paying for repairs that total the cost of my car when I purchased it. lol

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While I do my own maintenance, I don't pay for any of it....it's a company vehicle. Oil, filters, brakes, wipers, tires, company expense.

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My car just started acting up this morning, so I need to bring it in.  Not looking forward to that expense!

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My coworkers encourage me to simply deal with it since it's less expensive than an auto payment. But one thing about keeping it for now is that I'm obviously very familiar with its actual maintenance history,,, something you don't have buying a newer used vehicle. (Newer used?)

But damn it's annoying having to call up the mech shop so frequently for these simple and trifling things. Like people aren't busy enough already? But one big concern I have is having both an auto loan payment AND maintenance expenses together :/

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I'd rather make a monthly car payment than get hit with unexpected expenses especially if they are large amounts.

I never buy brand new ... well I did it just once ... always buy something that is a couple years old.  Run a Carfax report on it to check for major things and negotiate what I want to pay for the vehicle.  Always had pretty good luck !

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We're going through this with "old truck" now.... it's not that old.... 87. Looks older because road salt has eaten away at the body. But dang, we've put a few thousand in her this year. We've decided one more repair, the she goes up to the cabin. Not license, registration, insurance..... and she can die a slow graceful death on short trips down dirt roads.