At 08:27 AM 7/13/2000 -0700, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>
>In my case our '65 has cost us ridiculously little in the 31 years we have
owned it, .... (I am doing all the work myself, these costs are for
materials and parts.) So figure $20,000 invested over 31+ years, and I
expect to go at least five more years with minimal expense, maybe $1500.
$600/year for 35 years ain't bad!
>....
I agree. I find this to be spot on. I have kept track of all expenses on
my MGA from day one. I didn't buy it new, but I bought it cheap when it
was pretty well used up and proceeded to restore it, then have keep up the
maintaince ever since, including a second restoration.
The original restoration cost about $10,000 (finishing in 1986), which is
nearly irrelevant because that was about equal to the cost of a new car at
the time. I count gas, oil and tires (lots of those) as operating
expenses. Nearly all else is repairs and maintainance. From the end of
the first restoration to the end of the (90%) second restoration a couple
of years ago all repairs and maintainance (including multiple major engine
repairs and all of the second restoration) totaled just about $7200 in 12
years and 130,000 miles of very hard use.
The conclusion then is that $50 per month (and some of my own enjoyable
labor time) keeps this car on the road forever (at least as long as I am
still physically able to do it). That figures to be $0.055 per mile for
maintainance and restoration work, although this is likely to increase a
little with the cost of parts in the future. Since I have no intention of
ever selling it, inflation or depreciation of the value has nothing to do
with it, so I also won't mention anything (anything else that is) about
depreciation of new cars.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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