Sounds like you are right on the money 🙂 There really isn’t a point to buying a new car for those of us that are smart enough to see it! Glad that your Town Car is working well for you. Here’s to another 200K miles!

Thanks for your comments. Let me try and clarify a bit because I can see where the confusion is coming from.

On the first point that you raised, I meant this to mean that the repair cost would be $100 higher per year than that of the Corolla simply because it was older.

On the second point, I agree with you that owning a car has risks to it. What I meant when I said “no risk” was that there is no additional risk in switching from my older Camry to a newer Corolla. In this case, because I have chosen that I will own a car and operate it, and there is no additional risk, I consider this a “no risk” method of saving money by making the switch.

Hopefully this helps to clear up my thinking a little bit 🙂 Looking back on it now almost a year later, I’m very glad I made the change. My car is still running like a champ and saving me gas money every single month!

I agree you got a good deal and you did great homework to make sure you got a good deal. I just think the numbers and article are a bit overly optimistic.

It’d be interesting to compare a Prius vs. a Corolla in terms of long term ownership costs. I looked at a couple of used hybrid cars, but determined the unknown around battery replacement would be a large factor in the cost. I had the general sense that the Prius would be much harder to work on yourself, but that isn’t really based on any data – just a gut feeling. Thanks for sharing!

Yes IMHO electric cars still cost more than they save in the long term.

I know how to do the basics on cars, but I’m not really a car guy. For me, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot in this area. But, I can really appreciate people that love cars. In their case, it most definitely would make sense to spend more if they enjoy it that much!