Is it sensible to restore/upgrade a car in the long run?
February 2, 2015 5:43 PM Subscribe
In October 2014 I bought my first car – a used 2003 Audi A4 3.0 convertible – and despite being in excellent condition, there is some work I'd like to have done on it in the future, but is it worth it?
I love this car – it has heated red leather seats, a 3.0L engine with like 250 horsepower, a wood finish, and it only had 55, 000 miles on it when I bought it for a little less than $10, 000 – but despite its excellent condition, there is some wear-and-tear on it that I would like to have repaired in the future, like some of the upholstery, maybe some new rims and a paint job, etc.
The way I see it is that once I have finished paying off the loan for it the car is mine and will be mine for what I hope to be a long time. Instead of buying a new car in 10-15 years (or every 5-15 years like some do), because I can't really see myself ever needing more of a car than this, I'd like to maintain it as best as I possibly can, even if that means investing money into it to keep it as fresh and nice as it is.
However, since I don't know anything about mechanics or auto body work, I was wondering if this is a realistic objective or not.
Some input would be appreciated.
I love this car – it has heated red leather seats, a 3.0L engine with like 250 horsepower, a wood finish, and it only had 55, 000 miles on it when I bought it for a little less than $10, 000 – but despite its excellent condition, there is some wear-and-tear on it that I would like to have repaired in the future, like some of the upholstery, maybe some new rims and a paint job, etc.
The way I see it is that once I have finished paying off the loan for it the car is mine and will be mine for what I hope to be a long time. Instead of buying a new car in 10-15 years (or every 5-15 years like some do), because I can't really see myself ever needing more of a car than this, I'd like to maintain it as best as I possibly can, even if that means investing money into it to keep it as fresh and nice as it is.
However, since I don't know anything about mechanics or auto body work, I was wondering if this is a realistic objective or not.
Some input would be appreciated.
I just recently sold my 2001 Audi with 175,000 miles on it. I'd agree with Sara C. that it's unlikely you'll be driving this car in a decade. At some point all the electronics stuff will start getting flaky and it will be more expensive to fix than to replace the car.
posted by foodgeek at 6:21 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by foodgeek at 6:21 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
An Audi. No way.
My sister had that exact car. The electrical system alone was expensive as hell, with the added benefit of stranding her in places when it was least convenient.
And Sara C. has a point. How many old Audis do you see on the road? It's not just a coincidence.
People keep these kinds of cars on the road with lots and lots of money because they love them, not because it's practical.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:22 PM on February 2, 2015
My sister had that exact car. The electrical system alone was expensive as hell, with the added benefit of stranding her in places when it was least convenient.
And Sara C. has a point. How many old Audis do you see on the road? It's not just a coincidence.
People keep these kinds of cars on the road with lots and lots of money because they love them, not because it's practical.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:22 PM on February 2, 2015
your first car may be like your first love. a glorious thing, full of hair-in-the-wind limerence but not necessarily the only choice you have.
also: money pit.
posted by lalochezia at 6:27 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
also: money pit.
posted by lalochezia at 6:27 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, on the one hand, it's an old car already and it's not a particularly special or limited edition one.
On the other, I know a guy who has the 1973 Saab he bought when he got his first job out of college and he keeps in in fairly meticulous shape. It's probably cost him more than what buying new cars every so often would, but he loves that car and it's worth it to him.
So, you know, if you want to keep this car up because you love it and all that - no judgement from me - I've got a Tacoma in the garage with $10k in aftermarket nonsense bolted onto it. I get it - I like cars and I like working on them. Is it "worth it" ? To me, yeah - that truck is part of the reason I put on pants and go to work in the mornings. But you ?
You should understand that this isn't a strategy to minimize your costs or because it is (totally) practical. This is a strategy to maximize your happiness. That's not nothing, but you should be clear what your goals are - at some point, something major will happen and you will have to decide if the car is worth the cost and trouble.
If this car is going to be your DD (daily driver), you should make sure you've got funds for a rental or can otherwise deal with the car being unavailable for days/weeks while parts arrive and work can be done.
And if you live where they salt the roads, make sure you have a winter beater or that car will rot away to nothing.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:37 PM on February 2, 2015
On the other, I know a guy who has the 1973 Saab he bought when he got his first job out of college and he keeps in in fairly meticulous shape. It's probably cost him more than what buying new cars every so often would, but he loves that car and it's worth it to him.
So, you know, if you want to keep this car up because you love it and all that - no judgement from me - I've got a Tacoma in the garage with $10k in aftermarket nonsense bolted onto it. I get it - I like cars and I like working on them. Is it "worth it" ? To me, yeah - that truck is part of the reason I put on pants and go to work in the mornings. But you ?
You should understand that this isn't a strategy to minimize your costs or because it is (totally) practical. This is a strategy to maximize your happiness. That's not nothing, but you should be clear what your goals are - at some point, something major will happen and you will have to decide if the car is worth the cost and trouble.
If this car is going to be your DD (daily driver), you should make sure you've got funds for a rental or can otherwise deal with the car being unavailable for days/weeks while parts arrive and work can be done.
And if you live where they salt the roads, make sure you have a winter beater or that car will rot away to nothing.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:37 PM on February 2, 2015
maybe some new rims and a paint job, etc.
German cars have ridiculously nice paint jobs. there's almost no aftermarket paint job that's up to spec.
A friends dad worked at the paint bay of a local audi dealer, and had a lot of knowledge in this.(we almost got him to paint some bike frames for us and... anyways). Most places skimp on prep, quality of paint, number of coats, amount of sanding between them, and a lot of other disassembly and stuff. A real paint job on a car like that which would be up to factory snuff almost costs something like $4500+
Needless to say this is never worth it unless you either have a ton of money and love the car, or someone else is paying.
The only older audis i see anymore are the notable performance models, like the quattro S1, 200 quattro coupe, V8(aka the original A8), ur-S4, etc. People put LOTS of work and cash in to keeping those going.
You may be able to track down a nice set of seats or interior leather panels from a wrecked one. A lot of the other stuff though... ugh.
There's a reason a lot of audis this age are $2000 on craigslist. You're going to reach an "oh my god i'm tired of this shit" point some time after you swap the timing belt/water pump and do associated service soon. And you should probably get that belt checked actually, since it might have aged out rather than mileaged out and be disintegrating.
I've known several people who had VAG cars of this vintage. An old coworker was obsessed with the TDIs. Constant electrical gremlins, constant stupid overpriced parts and repairs. And this guy was like me, completely willing to buy parts and turn a wrench(or plug in a cable, as the case may be).
I can't escape the feeling that you're going to tire of this idea the second or third time you get hit with a $2500 repair.
posted by emptythought at 6:50 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
German cars have ridiculously nice paint jobs. there's almost no aftermarket paint job that's up to spec.
A friends dad worked at the paint bay of a local audi dealer, and had a lot of knowledge in this.(we almost got him to paint some bike frames for us and... anyways). Most places skimp on prep, quality of paint, number of coats, amount of sanding between them, and a lot of other disassembly and stuff. A real paint job on a car like that which would be up to factory snuff almost costs something like $4500+
Needless to say this is never worth it unless you either have a ton of money and love the car, or someone else is paying.
The only older audis i see anymore are the notable performance models, like the quattro S1, 200 quattro coupe, V8(aka the original A8), ur-S4, etc. People put LOTS of work and cash in to keeping those going.
You may be able to track down a nice set of seats or interior leather panels from a wrecked one. A lot of the other stuff though... ugh.
There's a reason a lot of audis this age are $2000 on craigslist. You're going to reach an "oh my god i'm tired of this shit" point some time after you swap the timing belt/water pump and do associated service soon. And you should probably get that belt checked actually, since it might have aged out rather than mileaged out and be disintegrating.
I've known several people who had VAG cars of this vintage. An old coworker was obsessed with the TDIs. Constant electrical gremlins, constant stupid overpriced parts and repairs. And this guy was like me, completely willing to buy parts and turn a wrench(or plug in a cable, as the case may be).
I can't escape the feeling that you're going to tire of this idea the second or third time you get hit with a $2500 repair.
posted by emptythought at 6:50 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I still have my first car - a 1970 Impala that I bought freshman year of college in 1994. It was my daily driver until 1999. Now it's show-and-go only; I started getting stranded at the most inopportune times--and I knew how to fix it!
Knowing little about cars, plus any car with electronics; yeah, I don't think it'll last as long as you think. Have fun while you've got it--don't get me wrong--but don't assume you'll never have to buy another car.
posted by notsnot at 7:09 PM on February 2, 2015
Knowing little about cars, plus any car with electronics; yeah, I don't think it'll last as long as you think. Have fun while you've got it--don't get me wrong--but don't assume you'll never have to buy another car.
posted by notsnot at 7:09 PM on February 2, 2015
You can totally maintain a car forever. But driving a car makes it wear out. And, as time goes on, maintaining a car will, generally speaking, be a more and more expensive proposition. I have an old BMW that I plan to keep for the foreseeable future, and I'm okay with that gradually becoming pricier, and with the car taking on gradually more patina/decrepitude. I also have an old truck (it's a Toyota), and, at some point, I plan to cut my losses and buy a different old truck.
posted by box at 7:40 PM on February 2, 2015
posted by box at 7:40 PM on February 2, 2015
New rims? Sure. They are not terribly expensive and it's easy enough to order them with a set of tires installed from TireRack or similar online places. You can put them on yourself in an afternoon with the included jack, or in a few minutes with a real floor jack.
But ... a paint job? That doesn't make much sense. Paint is expensive. It's also incredibly labor-intensive to apply properly (i.e. so it doesn't look like crap). On a beater, sure, you can take that thing down to Maaco and they'll put some paint on it to keep it from rusting... but on a nice Audi? It's an odd choice, let's say that. The only reason you'd need paint is if the factory coat is really looking bad, e.g. from weather or salt or rust under the paint, and all of those things would be a warning to me that the car has been abused and isn't going to last, and thus isn't worth repainting.
I'm all for keeping cars until they absolutely need to be replaced but I think it's unlikely that you're going to get 10+ more years out of it. Maybe if it's garaged and driven very lightly (then it'll last forever), but not if it's driven typically and parked outside. For the purposes of determining whether an improvement is worthwhile, I'd estimate the life of the car at around 150,000 miles. It may well last longer, but if it does it'll be well into "doesn't owe me anything" territory.
Also, don't forget that you could be pulling out onto a main road tomorrow and get T-boned and that'll be all she wrote (hopefully just for the car, not for you). There's a reason you see a limited number of very high-mileage cars on the road and it's not just mechanical issues. Cars get wrecked all the time.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:19 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
But ... a paint job? That doesn't make much sense. Paint is expensive. It's also incredibly labor-intensive to apply properly (i.e. so it doesn't look like crap). On a beater, sure, you can take that thing down to Maaco and they'll put some paint on it to keep it from rusting... but on a nice Audi? It's an odd choice, let's say that. The only reason you'd need paint is if the factory coat is really looking bad, e.g. from weather or salt or rust under the paint, and all of those things would be a warning to me that the car has been abused and isn't going to last, and thus isn't worth repainting.
I'm all for keeping cars until they absolutely need to be replaced but I think it's unlikely that you're going to get 10+ more years out of it. Maybe if it's garaged and driven very lightly (then it'll last forever), but not if it's driven typically and parked outside. For the purposes of determining whether an improvement is worthwhile, I'd estimate the life of the car at around 150,000 miles. It may well last longer, but if it does it'll be well into "doesn't owe me anything" territory.
Also, don't forget that you could be pulling out onto a main road tomorrow and get T-boned and that'll be all she wrote (hopefully just for the car, not for you). There's a reason you see a limited number of very high-mileage cars on the road and it's not just mechanical issues. Cars get wrecked all the time.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:19 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
You might want to consider that after a while, (used to be 10 years) manufacturers stop making spare parts. You can get quite a bit of stuff aftermarket and from junk yards, but it gets harder to keep the vehicle going.
I say this as someone who bought a new Mitsubushi in 1977 and finally had to let it go around 1992 - Had done a motor rebuild, transmission rebuild, re-did the interior, and then shortly after, (around '85) I got rear ended which wrecked the body beyond repair, so I found a body in a scrap-yard and transferred all the newly done work to a new body.
By 92 the floorboards were rusting out as well.
I did all the above work myself BTW. Man I loved that car.
posted by rudd135 at 4:11 AM on February 3, 2015
I say this as someone who bought a new Mitsubushi in 1977 and finally had to let it go around 1992 - Had done a motor rebuild, transmission rebuild, re-did the interior, and then shortly after, (around '85) I got rear ended which wrecked the body beyond repair, so I found a body in a scrap-yard and transferred all the newly done work to a new body.
By 92 the floorboards were rusting out as well.
I did all the above work myself BTW. Man I loved that car.
posted by rudd135 at 4:11 AM on February 3, 2015
Once you start talking about a new paint job (as opposed to touching-up some rough spots), you've seriously crossed over the "Practical Expense" line. A quality re-paint of a car is very, very expensive.
Your Audi shares many, many mechanical and electrical parts with VWs of that era...which is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing, in that parts aren't hard to come by. Curse, in that VWs of that era are pretty crappy, reliability-wise.
If it's still running great, get some new wheels and see what it might cost to repair whatever is wrong with the upholstery, but skip the re-paint.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:55 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Your Audi shares many, many mechanical and electrical parts with VWs of that era...which is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing, in that parts aren't hard to come by. Curse, in that VWs of that era are pretty crappy, reliability-wise.
If it's still running great, get some new wheels and see what it might cost to repair whatever is wrong with the upholstery, but skip the re-paint.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:55 AM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
VW/Audis are great in that once you get the service manual and a few specialized tools, you can service many things yourself. However, while the B6/3.0 platform is overall a pretty nice car, it needs lots of regular maintenance and attention to remain reliable. The convertible especially doesn't share as many spare parts with the B6 sedan.
I owned a 2002 A4 Sport Quattro which I only sold due to a long-distance move, and I loved that car but it helped a lot to have previously owned a Mk3 VW GTI... and have a couple of Audi certified techs in my black book for when things got serious.
Particular to your motor and car: ensure you have the catalytic converters inspected and replaced by Audi before 75k - there's a technical service bulletin (recall) that expires at 80k mi. If your check engine light is on it's probably bad cats and/or bad O2s. The 3.0 has 4 cats and 4 O2 sensors and they're a royal pain to get to. It also likes to eat coolant temperature sensors, which after you've done them two or three times can be changed in under an hour with a beverage in your hand. Get used to buying Audi spec coolant and OEM/Mann oil filters.
Have the timing service done before 75k as well, inspect your suspension - especially front control arms - and replace anything that's cracked including bushings. You'll balance the handling by swapping in the 2002 Sport package springs and the B6 RS4 rear sway bar. E-codes (european spec headlights) with projectors are a huge improvement over the likely fogged and faded, non-replaceable lenses. Better cutoff and projection with the right bulbs.
posted by a halcyon day at 1:48 PM on February 3, 2015
I owned a 2002 A4 Sport Quattro which I only sold due to a long-distance move, and I loved that car but it helped a lot to have previously owned a Mk3 VW GTI... and have a couple of Audi certified techs in my black book for when things got serious.
Particular to your motor and car: ensure you have the catalytic converters inspected and replaced by Audi before 75k - there's a technical service bulletin (recall) that expires at 80k mi. If your check engine light is on it's probably bad cats and/or bad O2s. The 3.0 has 4 cats and 4 O2 sensors and they're a royal pain to get to. It also likes to eat coolant temperature sensors, which after you've done them two or three times can be changed in under an hour with a beverage in your hand. Get used to buying Audi spec coolant and OEM/Mann oil filters.
Have the timing service done before 75k as well, inspect your suspension - especially front control arms - and replace anything that's cracked including bushings. You'll balance the handling by swapping in the 2002 Sport package springs and the B6 RS4 rear sway bar. E-codes (european spec headlights) with projectors are a huge improvement over the likely fogged and faded, non-replaceable lenses. Better cutoff and projection with the right bulbs.
posted by a halcyon day at 1:48 PM on February 3, 2015
Nthing that you are being too optimistic about the lifespan of this car. The reason why people replace their cars every 5-10 years isn't because they just love sinking money into the newest toy, or because they didn't maintain it properly. Even with meticulous maintainence cars just don't last that long.
Believe me, I would like nothing more than to drive my 2005 Subaru Forester until I'm hauling around grandkids but realistically it's not going to last me more than a couple more years.
Especially if you live in a place where they salt the roads.
posted by pintapicasso at 3:15 PM on February 3, 2015
Believe me, I would like nothing more than to drive my 2005 Subaru Forester until I'm hauling around grandkids but realistically it's not going to last me more than a couple more years.
Especially if you live in a place where they salt the roads.
posted by pintapicasso at 3:15 PM on February 3, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Next time you're driving around town, see how many 1988 vehicles you see. Probably not a lot, right? And chances are this isn't because you're the first person to really love your car, but because a lot of cars just don't hold up for 27 years. So I think you should mentally prepare yourself to be car shopping in ~5 years, not ~15 years. Just considering what the average lifespan of a typical car is. (And, AFAIK, Audis aren't really anything beyond typical in the longevity department.)
But, OK. A shorter lifespan for your car is no reason not to keep it up! I don't see any reason why you shouldn't look into upholstery and paint job costs and see if it's something that would be worth it for you. Regarding rims, isn't that mostly a cosmetic thing? Again, if that's what you want to spend money on, by all means. But I wouldn't mentally amortize these costs over 10+ years, because you'll be very lucky if your car lasts that long.
Also, before getting a new paint job or rims, you might want to look ahead to what kinds of maintenance your car will need as it hits upcoming milestones. Can you start saving now for maintenance that will be needed at 75,000 or 100,000 miles?
posted by Sara C. at 6:15 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]