Unfortunatly any newer car used as a daily driver will not last forever. I try to evaluate what is the best point for us to dump them.

There are formulas to follow. Or create your own. The best one can hope for is to minumise the average cost over the ownership years.

On our latest car two to three years of ownership looks like the lowest per year cost. It will stil have some power train warranty left. My wife does not really pile up the miles usually. This one is hers.

Beyond that in her situation runnning it into the ground makes some sense. I try to buy cars with consistant higher resale values. That does reduce the front end true cost in an abstract way. Of course the fly in the ointment is things can change over even the short term.

Buying decent auction cars a couple of years ago and driving them for the following two years. They are worth more on the open market now than they cost back then. The auctions are now priced too high in general now to pull this off. Things have seriously changed in the last two years.