Those are sad numbers, and I would like to have been the guy that paid you $1000 for it, certainly worth more than that unless it was totalled.

Buying a 10year old Mercedes is never going to be a cheap undertaking, ... it's still worth enough and has depreciation left, but it is already 10years old, you're probably the 3rd owner, average would be around 150,000 miles on the car, it's just hitting the first expensive round of maintenance.

I sold my '91 4matic when it was starting to become "the problematic" at 119,000 miles, and for $21,000 I felt sorry for the buyer because I knew that it was going to cost him more over the next few years in maintenance.

I did a few spreadsheets when I bought my first new car, looking at what the cost of ownership, residuals, etc. of buying a 3year/old car vs a new car were, the new car came out much cheaper based on 3years of ownership (back when German cars all had high resale values).

Now that those '90s cars are so inexpensive, it's mostly just maintenance, and any car nearing 20years and 240,000miles to 300,000 miles (the average for 10 years) will be a DIY car or too expensive to consider as a daily driver.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff