Quote:
Originally Posted by shertex
At the risk of being a bit of an interloper (I don't own a CDI yet), I am interested in people's thoughts as to how to balance the mileage/price issue. Assuming well-documented maintenance in all cases, where is one likely to get the most bang for the buck? And at what mileage does one begin to incur significant risk in terms of maintenance costs going forward?
I suspect I'd be willing to spend a bit more to get something in, say, the 150k mile range. But I wouldn't be averse to buying one with 250k miles for the right price.
There is a well-maintained one where I made some inquiries with 260k miles asking $8000. Sounds fair but not a GREAT deal.
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Car shopping:
I set up a spread sheet. With the following columns:
Year / State / asking price / miles / years to 300k ( for us it is 25k / year ) / purchase price divided by the number of years / a column for each available option / VIN / link to the ad
The purchase price per year of service to 300k gives me a relative cost comparison between different mileage cars. When they get to 300k, they will all have about the same relative salvage value.
For example:
2005 320 CDI / Texas / $10900 / 173,000 miles / 5.08 years to 300k / $2145 per year of service
2006 320 CDI / Arizona / $18995 / 80,000 miles / 8.8 years to 300k / $2158 per year of service
2005 320 CDI / Texas / $10998 / 113,000 miles / 7.47 year to 300k / $1473 per year of service
The first 2 cost about the same per year of service and were at the high end of cost/yr when I did this spread sheet in Jan. 2014.
The 3rd one was the lowest cost per year of service at that time.
That is just a starting point. Then I look at:
My budget for this purchase. I pay cash, so the $19,000 car was more than I wanted to tie up in a car.
The options on the car, including color in and out.
After I have decided what cars interest me, I look at the car itself, it's service history, carfax, PPI.
When I did this in Jan. of 2014, I had 32 cars listed. Doing this gave me a good sense of what was out there.
Of the 32 cars, here are the numbers that had the following options
873 heated seats - 26
530 Sat Nav - 21
819 CD changer - 19
540 rear screen - 23
297 side screens -14
433/4 dynamic seats - 6
443 heated steering - 1
889 keyless go - 3
413 panoramic roof - 2
220 parktronic - 2
The result of this shopping event was a 2007 ML 320CDI because my wife wanted AWD.
So, this Feb, when I came across a local 320CDI in Titanite Red, with leather heated dynamic seats, panoramic roof, Sat Nav, CD changer, Active Bi-Xenon head lights, new tires, 2014 Navigation disk, 196k, for $6995, I bought it.
If it was white, silver, or black, non-heated regular seats, standard sunroof, I would not have given it a second look because I didn't need it, but at that price, I could want it. That's just my opinion, it has no bearing on what you should do.