In the past I've been known to flip cars keep them under 4 years and some less than 2 years. I've lost a lot of money because of this.

I have a small fleet.4 cars, I've tried hard to keep them as long as I can so that I don't get massive depreciation.

I know a guy who will keep a car for 10+ years till it's dead. I don't think I'm going that far, but I'd like to keep my cars for a minimum of 5+ years.

So here are my current cars:

Passat 6+ years (so far very close to the longest I've ever kept a car)
Trooper 5 years
S2000 2.5 years
Sienna 1.5 years


I have 86K miles on the Passat. I'd like to make it to 100K miles, the most I've ever put on a car is around 88K miles. I figure 2 more years (around 8+ years) should do the trick.


What about the rest of you? Do you like to stick with a car after it's newness has worn off, or do you like to get something different ASAP?

 

One thing about keeping a car for a long time, by the time you get a new one it'll be a generation or two advanced.

Like if I keep my 99 passat till 2007 and get a 07/08 lexus (or whatever) it'll be a huge step ahead 9 or 10 model years. Where as if I got something new every 3 years it's be baby steps.

Funny when I gave my 88 Fox to my brother, whenever I drove it later on I was blown away by how much more modern my Passat was.

 

I enjoy getting dif. cars...havn't had too many yet, but doesn't take long till I get that itch for a new one...

car - days owned - miles driven
318i - 670 - 24500
z3 - 368 - 14500
z4 - 180 - 7100



probally will keep the z4 a little longer, since I bought it new & yeah depreciation does somewhat offer a good deterence to frequent car trades...

 

weird, I had a Z3 for about 18 months and 18K miles

Bond, James Bond.

 

I've had 9 cars and trucks in the last 5 years and I've lost my ass on a couple of them. I've got a 2003 daily driver that I bought new 369 days ago that I would trade or sell now in a heartbeat because I'm bored with it. My track car I've had for over 2

 

I've had eight cars in the past seven years (sometimes I've had two at a time). I try to limit the depreciation / switching cost by buying used, but I'd still taken huge baths on some of them.

 

ugh...i'm a changer (not a flipper)....don't remind me.....

but, for the first time in our lives, we may actually do OK car-wise.

bought my S2000 in the US and imported it (officially/legally) to canada - saved a boat load ($10K) due to the high CN dollar.

bought a used 7-series from a dealer auction for $15,000 less than retail a year ago. hoping to ditch it next year (2 years since we got it) for what i paid for it....similar cars to ours (condition/mileage wise) are still going for about 7-10K more than we paid for ours last year.

i will be purchasing future vehicles from said auction....you'd be surprised what pops up.

 

I kept my first car for a while, but as of 2003 I've had 4 cars.

02-03: 2003 WRX totalled after 5 months.
03: 1968 Chevelle restored and sold in 8 months.
04-05: 2002 S2000 traded in.
05- : 2005 G35C 6MT which I plan on keeping for a few years.

 

I plan on 1.5 years, usually keep them less than a year.

 

I've bought 8 cars in the last 10 years but usually have 3-4 at a time.

Here in maryland they really get you b/c when you trade in your car you don't get to count it's value against the new cars tax. In other words you pay 5% every time. So if you buy a $30K car that's $1500 tax no matter if you keep it a year or ten years.

So that works against selling very soon on top of the depreciation.

My friend has bought (and sold) the following cars 350Z, WRX, FX45 and 740i (still has) in the last 2.5 years