I bought my first Benz, a '79 300sd originally from California, for $7700 back in 1998 (at the very top of the market around here at the time) and drove it for 8 years, winter and summer, everywhere. Completely dependable till the chain broke one morning.... Put an engine into it, got bored, sold it to a farmer who pounded it until 2009 by which time he had let it rot out from under him. Sad.

Second SD was a Texas '82 that I was still doing the cosmetics on when a ditzy chick on a mobile driving daddy's Park Ave ran THREE red lights and met me at the FOURTH and pretty much removed my front clip. Would have been in a wheelchair if I had been driving a ricer. I had about $3500 into it, insurance gave me $6850 and I got $1200 for the remains from another SD owner.

Drove a high-miler Volvo 740 Turbo (about $750) for a couple of years, until I spun it out onto the lawn in front of the local police station during a snowstorm. Lawn was soft. Curb was decidedly not, moved rear suspension about 3 inches. Cops doing paperwork at start of shift were unimpressed.

By this time diesel market had spiked waaaay up and not wishing to pay silly eBay prices at the time for a nice-ish car, I bought a very scruffy '82 SD for $550 out in the Cali desert somewhere. Got it here and discovered it probably had 500k more miles than the odo said. Driver's door hinges and locking mechanism had worn out. OUCH. Everthing broke on it in first six months. After putting almost 2k into it I overrevved the engine, 100 pct my fault, and it ran for another six weeks, progressively losing power and belching more oil. Installed a replacement engine that turned out to have a bad IP. Lived with chronic miss at hot idle for a year then gave up and sold it to a pal who works in an import shop.

Took a break with payments (2005 Magnum bought in 2008).Got tired of being mainstream again, mostly with bad seats and my first experience of the notorious Charger/Magnum front-end rebuild (900 large every 2-3 yrs).

September 2010: 1980 TD, cost $1146 in Texas, transport $1300, more than $2k in work (servo, rad, brakes, hoses, front end, small rust in floor) and still not inspected. Subject of my posts on my80 tranny issues.

Just bought an '85 300d off eBay showing 91k miles, original owner for 28 years. Hit on rhs. Paid too much but I wanted it. We'll see....

most I've spent for my daily driver is on my 87 TD... 2500 plus upgrade repairs... total around 3200.00 including the vacuum pump, the fan clutch and the tensioner kit

I spend about $0.30 per mile, the only number that matters.

yeah craig... but you drive A LOT!!!

Also I don't think you can directly compare non-rustout areas to what we have to put up with in the rust belt.

Personally I refuse to chase rust (and the associated PITA in dealing with all manner of fasteners, bolts, etc.). Hence I pay through the nose to transport cleaner cars here from no-salt areas.

I envy you guys in 'dry' states with easy or non-existent licensing requirements. Wow, if only....

My wife's DD is a 1981 300SD. We bought it in 1986 for $18.5K. I do all the work on it and we have averaged $685/yr on maintenance. My DD is a 1982 300SD which we bought for $19.5K in 1988. Maintenance for this car has averaged $705/yr. These maintenance figures also include tires, paint and upholstery work. They are still both operating on R12.

Damn that R12 is good stuff. The only successful ac rebuild i did i used that .

I think thats about right. 500 to 750 a year in maintenance for a daily driver. What you pay up front can be anywhere from 500.00 to as high as you want to go.

I've found my cheapest and best Mercedes daily drivers both had over 250,000 miles and have fewer problems now than my "expensive" 130,000 mile benzs. Anyone else have that experience. I guess more parts was replaced by previous owners. That 125,000 to 250,000 mile range seems to be where a lot of big stuff breaks and either the PO takes care of it or lets the car go to crap. So if you want a cheap daily driver, go for a high 250,000 + mileage Benz diesel that was well taken care of. My 2 cents.

I try to subscribe to a daily driver mentality. I can't see driving anything more expensive than necessary but everyone's definition of necessary is different I suppose. I always have a newish and therefore reliable pickup as a backup to drive though. So I guess my answer is <$15k car and I only drive diesel. I was driving an ALH Jetta which got 40 mpg and now the SDL gets 25 but the additional comfort and space is worth it. I just can't keep them all insured at once so one pickup and one dd stays insured.

That said, last week I dropped my motorcycle against the dd 300 SDL in the garage, dinging it and it really ticks me off. Mostly because of my stupidity though where on the road I tell myself not to put myself into the position of worrying too much about a dd. Not worth the stress others can inflict on you IMHO.

Frank I totally thought that maroon 300 SDL that went for like 13k in so Cal would have been worth it for you, again IMHO. Just don't make cars like the W126 for this kind of money that is for sure.

I bought my SD for $1000 a couple years ago, put about $1500 of parts into it (mostly brakes) and then noticed the rust was getting far too bad/dangerous after 15k miles. Bought another almost-rust-free (grrr, didn't see it until I really dug into it) shell from a forum member for next to nothing + 200 for shipping and just completed the engine/trans swap this summer. Should be able to get at least 50% of my money back, but I'm gonna drive the crap out of it.

I've never paid over 4k for a car and driven about 100k since getting on the road. My 300E is so far the most expensive but its sort of a special case having been abused, possible theft recovery and unknown history...doesn't bother me though since it is cosmetically near-perfect, a new engine may be in store. Dodge Stealth was the cheapest, 40k miles and only performed the 120k tune up of a water pump, timing belt, plugs/wires etc. All comes down to wanting to deal with an older car and its associated maintenence or not, I love working on them so it all works.

11.5 years ago, before I spent $45,500 on my sig. car, my daily-driver dollar limit was $30K.

I have since returned to that $30K limit. $30K buys all the car I want, new or used.

As little as possible if I can help it
 

As little as possible and no new car if at all possible. But it all depends on individual's comfort zone and circumstances. So everyone is different and there is no over-spent or under-spent so to speak.

My target is to get it down to $0.08 per mile for all my driving needs. That includes insurance ( 3rd party only ), maintenance, consumerable, DMV licence and fuel costs. I am under my target from 1/1/10 to now. We do about 35K per year combined.

BTW: I discounted the car depreciation as the initial investments were dirt cheap. I would never, ever, spend more than $3K on repairs on any of the cars. There are a lot of good MBZ diesel to be had for $3k. Why sink money into a losing proposition?

Including tools and repairs?

Over how many years do you depreciate the purchase price?

How does any of that make a difference to anything here?

Everything. I spend about $0.15 per mile for fuel. I drive about 50k miles per year so; $0.15 x 50,000 = $7500 per year for maintenance, repairs, etc. The current IRS rate is $0.50 per mile, so I'm happy as long as I don't exceed that cost.

I only paid about $8000 for the car 350,000 miles and 10 years ago, so the original purchase price us negligible on a per mile basis. The car has paid for itself several times over.

Used cars cheap as possible consistant with reliability at our needed level. Less than that you should have a back up vehicle. I tend to keep an eye open for low milage cars in good condition.Dare I say for a reasonable price as well. I may buy a car a year before it sees service with us on occasion.

I really try to stay away from models for daily drivers that have a pronounced tendency to have issues. Certain current cars I would not want if someone gave them to me.

We dump our daily drivers as soon as it starts to look expensive or time consuming to keep the reliability in that car. Cost per mile I do not bother to track as we are stuck with that anyways. Other than that I try to stay with daily drivers that on average depreciate less than a thousand dollars a year each.

Some years ago I was finished with costly cars for daily transportation. I just felt it was a total waste and occasionally telegraphed the wrong image as well.

To keep two daily drivers on the road for my wife and myself probably costs an average of eight hundred a month including fuel, self done maintenance, insurance, registrations and depreciations. This is just a guess but seems about right to me. We pay about 4.50 an american gallon for fuel as well remember. So this may drive the cost of ownership a little higher than an american experiences in simular circumstances.

In my youth one car per family was the average if the children were young. Today two cars seem an absolute neccesity. Even if ancient and semi retired as we are. This semi retirement is a killer for us as we are always still so busy. As I sit here typing I almost feel guilty about what I should be doing instead. I am learning to live with the guilt I suppose as well.

Although it can wait as I will never get caught up anyways even if I tried. If there is light at the end of the tunnel I will have to shovel out the tunnel first.