I am currently shopping for a used vehicle. I am hoping to spend between $10,000 and $16,000 CAD and looking for something that will be reliable and low cost.
My current vehicle is a 2009 Mazda 3. When I bought it, the car was around 3 years old with 70,000km on it. It is now 11 years old with 200,000km on it. My mechanic has advised me that I have around $2000 of repairs and that I should look for a new car.
When I purchased my last car, I used the Lemonade series of books to evaluate different options. In the book, the author does an in-depth analysis of every car's reliability, costs, safety, etc. Unfortunately, this resource isn't published anymore.
The main question I am trying to solve is "What car should I buy". In order to address this question, I am interested in answering these questions:
- What will the cost of owning for 10 years.
- How much effort will it be to maintain? How frequently will I be stranded?
I have looked at:
CAA Driving Costs Calculator - This seems to provide interesting data. One limitation is that estimated costs are for a 5 year period. I am interested in reliability over a longer window.
Edmonds Cost of Car Ownership - Problem with this data is that it is US-centric. Car costs vary quite largely between Canada and the US. Additionally, in Quebec we have difficult winters and salt our roads which introduces different maintenance problems.
