Yup, I estimate I can drive mine indefinitely for about $0.30 per mile, maybe $0.15 for fuel and $0.15 for everything else. I drive mine about 40K miles per year, so that gives me about $6K per year to put into everything else. In reality, I spend about $3K per year in "routine" maintenance/repair, so I have an extra $3K to put into "big ticket" items (engines, transmissions, major suspension work, body, interior, etc).

I estimate it would cost me about $0.50-.60 per mile to drive a new one (mostly in depreciation) because the value would rapidly drop for $60K to $10K in a few years. The maintenance/repair costs would be less, maybe $1-2K per year. Even if I paid cash (the only way to buy any car) it wouldn't be a great deal, and I would be stuck driving a series of cars I wouldn't like.

The cheapest alternative is to do what you suggested, buy them at 2 or 3 years old (maybe $30K cash) and drive them until the get to about 150-200K miles and sell them for about $10K. I'm guessing that I could do that for more like $0.20-.25 per mile. Again, those are not cars that I really want to own.

The dirt cheap alternative is to buy old ones for nothing, put fuel and nothing else in them and drive them until you kill them (probably $0.15 per mile, less if you dumpster dive and run them on garbage). I'm not interest in serial auto abuse, and I don't want to drive junk. Might as well just buy a civic if you are going to do that.

I read a lot.....

It's also been my experience that people driving FWD cars don't write checks for new MBs either.......they're too busy keeping payments up on things like cars they still owe on.