Saved gas = to the price of my car over 3 years

[brucepick]

Well if you made it through reading the thread title, kudos!

I saved well over $4000 driving my Civic since its purchase, as compared with what I would have spent driving my previous daily driver.

Bought my Civic 2 years and 11 months ago.
Have driven it 85,782 miles since then, at an average 42.94 mpg.

I'd been driving a Volvo 240 wagon, long term average probably about 26 mpg.

Calculating the cost of feeding the Volvo for those 85.78K miles vs feeding the Civic, I saved about $4200. That's approximately equal to the cost of the Civic plus the head rebuild project that I had done this past spring.

Not bad at all!!

[Old Mechanic]

I started rebuilding cars in 1973. Over the last 3 decades most of the cars I have owned were worth more than I spent on them even after driving them tens of thousands of miles.
Since early 2008 our combined family mileage has hovered around 50 MPG give or take about 5, even though the cars have changed, and in some cases been replaced by motorcycles. In 2008 pursuing my patent, I drove probably over 35k miles, but lately that has dropped by over 50%.
The truck does 200 per month@20 MPG=10 gals
The Altima does about 500 per month@34 MPG=15 gals
The CBR 250R about 500 per month@84 MPG=6gals
31 gallons to travel 1200 miles
Close to 40 MPG overall. If I sell the house I fixed up and then sell the truck, it would be 1000 miles on 21 gallons or close to 50 MPG.
I'll get all the money back I spent on the truck except the cost of fuel.
The wife uses 7 gallons per week in her Rogue, unless she takes a trip to her daughters houses.
Her monthly fuel is very close to the 31 gallons I use so it would be 62 gallons a month.
We are still right at $200 a month in total fuel cost.
Its about what we pay in property taxes on our home.

regards
Mech

[Frank Lee]

Good Lord that's a lotta miles!

[Karadjas]

Free Civic, not bad

I find that I'm a whole different driver when I'm in eithe rof my cars. While the fun one (previously serving double duty as a daily driver) made me permanently look for chances to give it some (and very frequently drain the local pump and my current account), the new-to-me TDi puts me in a nice econominded mood. At only 1000 euro cost, the TDi should pay for itself within a year.

[redyaris]

I payed $16500 for my 2007 Yaris and I get 26mpg better milage [47mpg -21mpg] than the average. So I will have saved enough on fuel [@ $3.75/gal] at 115,000miles to pay for the car, in fuel savings.

[PaleMelanesian]

In 2000 I traded my Suburban (18 mpg actual) for this Civic.
I paid $4000 plus the 4000 trade for an actual price of $8,000.
I drove 77,000 miles as an "average" driver at about 33 mpg. Gas prices were about $2.50 average during that time, so I saved an estimated $4,180 there.
I've since hypermiled it for 39,000 miles, saving an estimated $4,325 vs 18 mpg at the same prices.

This car paid for itself before I hypermiled it. Since then it's paid for the trade in, so it's paid for the full sale price.

[brandonppr]

I'm hoping to pay for my malibu the same way.
I just bought it, but before my dd was a dodge ram 5.7 and now its a malibu 2.4

[Ford Man]

I have no idea how many times my '88 Escort Pony has paid for itself in fuel savings. My previous daily driver was a '76 Chrysler Cordoba which got about 14-16 MPG the Escort has averaged 41.59 MPG since I started my fuel log. I paid $500 for the Escort in '93 with 146K miles on it, today it's got over 517K miles, so no doubt it's paid for itself several times in gas savings alone. It has also been involved in a couple of accidents that I've pocketed about $1000. on by electing to do the necessary repairs and forget the rest.

[PaleMelanesian]

Haha! I think you win!

[wdb]

Nice numbers, but oh my you drive a lot of miles!

I used to put 40K+ on my car each year too. I went from a 20-ish MPG Subaru to a 38-ish MPG Honda (and also from premium to regular fuel), and justified the purchase of the Honda purely on fuel savings alone. I don't have the long commute anymore so the car hasn't quite paid for itself, but the fuel savings more than covered the car payments while I was racking up those miles.