New little wagon

[Terri Kennedy]

Originally Posted by robg

Terry - do you happen to know the total you’ve spent on repairs/maintenance over the life of your wagon? Im curious what it takes to run a German car once it’s long out of warranty. My guess is an average of $250/month? I know you love that car so it’s not a question of $$, but just curious as it relates to buying and running fully depreciated cars.

As FC pointed out, it depends on the number of miles and type of service. I doubt you use yours for rock crawling.

The last service my wagon had (in July 2020) was around $5000 at 135000 miles. I'd have to look at my credit card receipts because it was initially higher but I bitched about the price and they refunded around $750 off the invoice.

That was for the aforementioned "replace everything between the kidneys and the engine block" which was around $1750 for the parts plus $1800 for labor on that part of the service. Then there was an Inspection II for $860 parts & labor. I had also forgotten that they ended up replacing the lower control arms which wasn't on that estimate. This is an independent shop that uses "BMW or better" replacement part brands.

The complete cooling system replacement is pretty much going to happen at some time. Mine came a little earlier than 150000 miles, but as I said, there's the aforementioned rock crawling (a good bit of which happens in the Mojave Desert and specifically in/near Death Valley). It is certainly possible to replace only the parts that need replacing, but then you get clobbered in labor costs to keep tearing it down to get to the part, and you're more likely to have a catastrophic failure at the worst possible time (like rock crawling in Death Valley ).

That is getting up close to "more than the car is worth", if you're looking at the basic car without all of the options and mods on mine.

The service the year before that was an annual oil change / inspection and a new set of tires. I'd consider all of that normal wear items and not "maintenance".

I do brake rotors and pads myself, along with other smaller maintenance items.