QOTD: What Have Your Maintenance Costs Been Like?
Today our podcast went deep on which brands are the cheapest and costliest to maintain.
Now I am curious what your experiences have been.
Has your car-ownership experience matched Consumer Reports' findings? Or have you, for whatever reason, experienced the opposite.
It seems obvious that most people would have an experience close to what CR found, but maybe one you found your Lexus to be both extremely reliable and also somehow cheap to fix when it does break? Or something.
Anyway, what have you seen out there in the world? Sound off below.
[Image: Standret/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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All new cars, repairs only, in chronological order:
1996 Eagle Vision Tsi: $400 in repairs in 90k miles, and an under warranty fuel rail replacement. Did I get lucky?
2001.5 VW 'New Jetta' 1.8T auto. Transmission self-destructed within six months. "You're lucky this was under warranty, this would have been like 11 grand." Traded it immediately. Electrical gremlins started showing up too.
2002 Nissan Pathfinder. One $400 repair out of warranty, 02 sensor, in 100k miles.
2012 Nissan Maxima, $0 in 24k.
2013 Nissan Altima, $0 in 50k.
2014 Dodge Charger AWD. $400 sensor out of warranty in 130k. Again, did I get lucky?
2005 Honda Accord at about 125k miles - oil change, replace bad starter (also intake gasket), front and rear brakes, state inspection, about $1200 at a local garage. Front brakes were replaced free under warrantee because they were done last year.
2015 Mazda CX-5 with 102k - Took to dealer to diagnose "clunk" on takeoff and transmission slow to engage. After pointing out an apparent transmission leak and that nearly every bushing/boot under the car is cracked and/or failing in their inspection video, service techs said everything "looked safe". They tightened the cowl bolts in an (unsuccessful) attempt to address the clunk, completely side-stepped the transmission leak ("...it's a sealed unit, we can't touch it except to replace it entirely...") and charged me $450. About $33k to replace it with a new '24 Forester. Will be working on diagnosing and reconditioning the Mazda myself in the coming days...🙂
2015 VW GTI w DSG, 112k miles
One warranty fix(legendary water pump, $0 out of pocket).
Otherwise, regular synthetic oil changes, all done myself, 2 DSG oil changes, also myself. New brakes all around, paid to have those done. That's it, nothing out of pocket besides regularly scheduled maintenance.
Oops, forgot 2022 Polestar 2, 44k miles, zero maintenance thus far