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Originally Posted by roflwaffle
I think you'll need to repair any car over 20-30 years.
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By that time, unless it's either some model highly valuable as a collector's item or has some feature that turned uncommon on newer cars that makes it desirable to very specific groups, much of the residual resale value is long gone but it's still often less expensive and energy-intensive to repair an old beater to keep it on the road instead of having a new econobox built and shipped to the dealer.
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But yeah, 5-10mpg better for $5k-$10k has a long payback period at current gas prices.
At the same time, if gas goes back to $3-4/gallon for a few years, or you find yourself having to drive more, the payback can speed up a fair bit.
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In an old beater that would anyway be in need of some extensive repairs, that might actually sound like a good excuse to apply some technical updates that would be much likely to extend not just its useful lifespan but also its fuel economy. For those who take modding their cars more as a hobby than as a money-saving trick, it might seem quite reasonable. And there are other priorities that might lead one into ecomodding, such as a wish to decrease the consumption of imported energy resources.