I have a 93 Dodge caravan that I have driven forever and keep it running even though it has 170K miles on it. We are saving money right now to move back to Maine and buy land, but we thought we might take some of that money and buy ( outright) a used Toyota siennna. We thought about doing this by July but if my old van is still running I would think it will cost less (even with repairs, AAA membership, and my cell phone for just in case) than a new van. Since the newer van will deplete most of the savings and we would be starting over. SO what would you do? Keep the old van until it dies and is no longer able to be fixed. Or deplete savings to buy newer van now and start over saving for the land? When I type this all out it seems like a no brainer to me, keep my oldie but goodie, but we also make 4 trips to Maine every year, that is a 12 hour trip one way. Maybe we could rent a van for those weeks we go up? When the van does eventually die we will be buying a sienna with savings but I think I can keep the beloved caravan going strong past July. Anyway what would you do?

Oh how I miss my Caravan! I think it was a '93, too.

Kate ~ I would keep the old van until it dies - unless it is costing you almost as much or more than a car payment each month to keep it going. (I am thinking lower end car payments, too - not $300.mo.) Or it has really become a gas hog.

Do keep in mind that my DH could probably fix anything on the van unless it was major motor trouble. We run used cars and don't mind keeping them even when they get old as long as they are still running efficiently. We have pretty "new" cars right now ('97 and '98).

I had a Camry wagon that had 150ishK miles on it and it was having some 'issues' which bugged me enough to get a newer vehicle 5 years ago.

I sold the Camry to a family member and whenever my newer vehicle is in the shop I borrow it to drive for the day(s) and think to myself "Gee, this is sure a pretty nice car........now why did I get rid of it?"

I actually thought it was on a car's death's door and about to go kaput, but, I WAS WRONG........lol:joker:

I'd keep it, too, until it dies entirely.

I made a different decision with a newish van I had, a 98 Windstar, we sold it "preemptively" while it was still running, but in our case it was because I am currently putting 60 hard city miles on a car every day, and it was causing enough frequent repairs that when we considered the cost of the repairs, the cost of the gas as it was a hog, and the inconvenience of my autistic child missing school because I didn't have a vehicle to drive him there, we decided to sell it privately and bought a newer car that got better mileage and has a warranty till 87k miles.

So, needs are so individual...if I were still homeschooling...I would *never* have even considered buying a newer car. Or if we were just driving locally to a school. But we knew that with the tranny problems that our particular year Windstar is prone to, and the hard city driving, chances were that at the end of the year with 20k more miles on it, it might very well be worth 0 dollars...instead we got $5k for it toward the new car.

When we bought our new car, we took out a loan, but since we are planning within a couple of years to sell our house and use the equity to buy land, I kept thinking, "ok we have probably $55k equity...do I really want to use $20k of that toward a car??" And so we got a car that was much less, our loan is only for $8k. That was all I could justify taking out of our "land fund."

Thanks Mamas, I feel the same way now. And I really love my old van, it has been good to me and with all the work I have put into it over the years it ought to be practically new LOL

I read a book once by Don Aslett, the house cleaning guy, and he talked about how long cars can really go if we just give them the chance. He said he started asking taxi drivers how many miles they had on their cars and their answers were unbelievable-waaay more than most people even consider letting their cars go to. If we change the oil regularly and treat the car well, we will be suprised how long it lasts. A lot of people sort of give up on cars and then stop taking care of them. And a lot of people just don't like driving around in old looking cars. Personally, I think old looking cars are much better, because I don't have to worry about anyone stealing them, I don't worry about keeping them locked. Who's going to steal an (UUUGGGLLLYYY) 87 chevy cavalier or a 95 ford crown victoria?

So I'd have to say my vote is for keeping the oldie but goodie. When it dies, you will rest assured that it was loved, happy, and well used to the very end of its life! What more could a car ask for?