Expected Repair and Maintenance Costs by Car Brand

I've previously discussed the idea of looking at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a car instead of focusing on just price.  TCO looks at a few costs like fuel cost, depreciation, interest expense from financing, etc.   One of the bigger functions of your ongoing costs for a car could be the repair and maintenance bills.  Using TCO is great but sometimes the numbers aren't availalbe for certain years of used cars.   So I wanted to get a sense of the maintenance costs.  Less reliable brands or makes could have higher repair bills and some cars are more expensive to maintain than others. I wanted to try and get an idea of how different brands of cars compare as far as repair and maintenance costs.  


To get an idea of repair and maintenance costs per brand I'm going to rely on the TCO data from Edmunds as a guide.  I decided to look up some mid size sedans for each brands as examples.   I picked one model car for each brand for starters.  I got all of the repair and maintenance costs I'll look at today from the Edmunds TCO data.   I looked up each car and noted the expected purchase price and the total repair and maintenance costs for the 5 year period.   I chose to look at cars from 2008 so they would be a bit old and start to show some wear.  Brand new cars won't have much in the way of repair bills and are still under warranty so comparing new cars won't be as meaningful.  I picked 2008 since it was a few years ago and Edmunds had data for that year.

A few notes :  The repair and maintenance costs are just forecasted estimates from Edmunds.   They base it off reported repair rates and costs from customers of the cars.   The numbers assume that current trends will continue.   We're only looking at one year here and car reliability for brands changes over time so a specific brand car from 2013 or 2002 may be more or less reliable and that would impact the repair and maintenance costs.    Lastly, of course these are just meant as average costs and everyones individual experiences will vary.   Your car may be a lemon and cost you more or more often people will not see as high of repair costs.  I assume that individual repair costs are often $0 and its the unlucky individuals with high repair bills that account for most of the costs in the averages.  In other words a $4,000 repair bill is not typical, but its the average from a couple people one who has $200 in repairs and the other with $7800.  (thats just an illustrative example, I don't know what the distribution is like).   Again, these are just forecasted expectations from Edmunds and not actual observed costs.  They're' trying to put a guess on how much people will spend moving forward based on the best data they have.   The maintenance cost may be easier to predict since it is probably based on the manufacturer maintenance schedule and known average costs for service.  Ok, enough explaining...

Here are the numbers for the sample  models that I picked for each brand :

Brand	Model	Price	Repair	Maint
Acura	TL	$17,491	$2,945	$4,691
Audi	A4 2.0T	$15,649	$6,564	$5,810
BMW	328i	$20,119	$7,743	$7,997
Buick	Lacrosse	$10,290	$2,554	$3,813
Cadillac	CTS	$19,486	$5,496	$6,293
Chevy	Malibu	$9,999	$3,975	$2,424
Chrysler	300 C	$17,419	$2,763	$4,379
Dodge	Charger	$11,279	$2,554	$5,692
Ford	Fusion	$9,477	$2,526	$4,685
Honda	Accord EX	$13,319	$2,203	$4,356
Hyundai	Sonata	$8,890	$2,091	$3,683
Infiniti	G35	$16,804	$3,396	$4,782
Jaguar	S type	$19,199	$13,605	$6,154
Kia	Optima	$9,290	$2,091	$3,426
Lexus	IS 350	$20,143	$3,056	$5,935
Lincoln	MKZ	$14,426	$2,945	$6,208
Mazda	6-touring	$10,620	$2,439	$4,523
Mercedes	C300	$18,298	$8,222	$5,893
Mercury	Milan	$9,656	$2,754	$5,393
MINI	Cooper	$13,986	$3,373	$6,350
Mitsubishi	Galant	$7,689	$2,263	$4,341
Nissan	Maxima	$14,621	$2,203	$3,580
Pontiac	G6	$8,709	$2,424	$3,223
Saab	9-3	$10,604	$6,915	$5,533
Saturn	Aura	$8,851	$2,424	$3,207
Scion	tC	$10,842	$2,203	$5,259
Subaru	Impreza	$10,257	$2,693	$4,909
Suzuki	SX4	$8,204	$1,888	$4,162
Toyota	Camry	$10,308	$2,203	$5,178
VW	Jetta	$9,052	$2,803	$5,258
Volvo	S40	$11,638	$5,168	$6,695

Bottom line is the combined cost of repair and maintenance for each car.  Here are the cars sorted by total repair and maintenance cost over the 5 years :

Brand	Combined
Kia	$5,517
Saturn	$5,631
Pontiac	$5,647
Hyundai	$5,774
Nissan	$5,783
Suzuki	$6,050
Buick	$6,367
Chevy	$6,399
Honda	$6,559
Mitsubishi	$6,604
Mazda	$6,962
Chrysler	$7,142
Ford	$7,211
Toyota	$7,381
Scion	$7,462
Subaru	$7,602
Acura	$7,636
VW	$8,061
Mercury	$8,147
Infiniti	$8,178
Dodge	$8,246
Lexus	$8,991
Lincoln	$9,153
MINI	$9,723
Cadillac	$11,789
Volvo	$11,863
Audi	$12,374
Saab	$12,448
Mercedes	$14,115
BMW	$15,740
Jaguar	$19,759

One thing to consider is that it will cost more to repair a more expensive car.   More expensive cars have more expensive parts.    This would at least in part explain why luxury cars like Mercedes may cost more to repair.   However we also see that more expensive cars like the Lexus or Infiniti cost substantially less to repair and maintain. 

Now lets look at variations within a specific brand.  

Here are a few Chrysler 2008 models :

Model	Price	Repair	Maint	Total
300 C	$17,419	$2,763	$4,379	$7,142
Pacifica	$11,091	$2,554	$5,226	$7,780
TC Minivan	$9,690	$2,554	$4,287	$6,841
Crossfire	$16,768	$2,554	$5,779	$8,333
Sebring	$7,691	$2,554	$4,373	$6,927

You can see theres about $1400 difference between total repair and maintenance costs across the different Chrysler models here.   Notice that the repair bills are mostly the same across the models at $2,554 for 4 different cars with only the 300C costing a couple hundred more.   This makes sense because mostly repair costs are related to powertrain failures and the cars would use common powertrains.  For example if a Pacifica and a Crossfire have the same 3.6L engine in them then the likelihood of engine repairs would be the same and the cost would be the same.   Across these Chryslers the average total repair and maintenance is $7,405 and the high of $8,333 for the Crossfire is 13% more and the T&C minivan is 8% less.  So for the Chrysler models I've looked at here the sum cost of repair and maintenance is $7,405 plus or minus 13%.

By comparison lets now look at one of the more pricey brands and compare some BMW models.

Model	Price	Repair	Maint	Total
528i	$20,964	$7,743	$9,961	$17,704
M3	$33,468	$7,743	$8,843	$16,586
328i	$20,119	$7,743	$7,997	$15,740
750Li	$33,700	$7,743	$8,999	$16,742
Z4	$19,069	$7,743	$7,482	$15,225

For these BMW's the average total cost is $16,399.   The range is +8% at $17,704 for the 528i and -7% less at $15,225 for the Z4.    You'll notice that the repair costs are flat at $7,743 for all the BMW's that I looked at.

Lastly I'll look at the Kia brand which had the lowest combined cost across the brands I sampled initially.   For 5 different Kias we get :

Model	Price	Repair	Maint	Total
Optima	$9,290	$2,091	$3,426	$5,517
Amanti	$11,555	$2,091	$4,559	$6,650
Rio	$5,415	$2,091	$4,633	$6,724
Spectra	$7,021	$2,091	$3,728	$5,819
Sedona	$9,410	$2,091	$3,794	$5,885

The average is $6,119 and it varies +/-10% between the high of $6,724 for the Rio and a low of $5,517 for the Optima.

So thats 3 different brands I looked at several models from, the Chryslers, BMW and Kia.   For each brand the repair costs are the same across all models for the brand.   I guess this is due to Edmunds assuming that repairs will be based on the engine design and quality which is generally the same across models for a brand.     Overall the total costs for repair and maintenance of a particular model car tend to vary about +/-10% from the average for the brand.

Now I've only looked at 3 brands in more detail here, and there could be some other brands that have wider variance in the expected repair and maintenance costs.   But I think its a fairly safe bet that most if not all brands follow this trend of having about +/-10% variation between models.
- -

Best of Blog Posts for Week of September 7th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week.

FreeMoneyFinances gives the cautionary gale of A Co-Signing Horror Story

Planet Money has some cool charts in Jobs In America, In 2 Graph that show job loses and gains over the past 4 ears in various sectors.   For example construction industry has been ravaged with about 2 million lost jobs down ~25% yet Health care jobs are up about 1.25M gaining almost 10%.

RetireBy40 recommends we Avoid Lifestyle Inflation


--

FREE - $5 MP3 at Amazon for signing up for Scott Shared Values

Right now you can get a free $5 MP3 credit at Amazon.com by signing up for Scott Shared Values.

Sign up here : 

Scott Amazon Offer

You don't have to buy anything, just sign up for an account.   They ask for email address but don't require mailing address so they won't mail you junk, but you may get email.  At one point during the signup they talk about getting coupons for Scott products, and there is a smaller and less noticable link to skip that and go to the Amazon deal.  I skipped the coupons myself but if you want the coupons then I assume the Amazon deal is after that at some point.   So if you get to a point that appears they are just trying to give you Scott coupons then look closer and you should see the Amazon link.

The Amazon credit lasts until 1/31/2013.   I'm not sure how long the Scott offer lasts though.

I saw this deal on Slickdeals.net

- -

Distribution of Wealth in US by Age

Recently over on FreeMoneyFinance an author claimed that senior citizens control 'most' of the nations wealth.   That didn't sound right to me so I decided to investigate.   I found that seniors actually hold about 1/3 of the nations wealth.

The Survey of Consumer Finances 2010 breaks down net worth by family based on age of households.   They give the median and mean net worth for families in each age range.   I can use that and the total number of people in various age ranges (table 1 from the Census CPS ) to figure the total net worth for people of different age groups in the US.   When we then add up the total net worth we can find the distribution of net worth based on age of household head.

Here's the data :

And table form :

Age of head (years)
Less than 35	2.9%
35–44	8.1%
45–54	24.7%
55–64	31.2%
65–74	19.3%
75 or more	13.9%

As you can see the younger families hold very little of the total wealth and the older families have most of the money.    I expect that this is simply due to accumulating money over time.   Seniors do hold a disproportionately high portion of the nations wealth.   People age 65 and older have just about 1/3 at 33.2% of the whole.   At the other end of the spectrum families with heads under age 35 have just 2.9% of the wealth yet they represent 22% of the population.



- -