Just a short summary of cost in the last 4 1/2 years:
Purchased for $7,500 - Sold for $3,500
Total miles driven: 82,000 (18,500 per year)
Cost Per mile (cents) Depreciation $4,000 4.88 Maintenance $862 1.05 Repairs $1,486 1.81 Tires $1,009 1.23 Insurance / Registration (estimate) $3,200 3.90 Fuel (estimate 82K miles / 27 mpg x $3,20) $9,718 11.85 Total $20,275 24.73
I did most maintenance and repairs myself and that is where you can save quite a bit of money. I also bought it for a very good price and would have paid more for it. But I just got lucky with finding the right car with low miles for a great price.
Fuel is the largest expense, even though it was pretty good on gas. However, premium gas is about $0.60 to $0.70 more than regular so you loose some of the savings in good gas mileage to the higher price. The extra cost of premium vs regular was about $2,000.
Maintenance includes oil changes (12x), ATF changes (2x), filters, spark plugs and other small things. As you can see, that is such a small part of the total cost of running a car so never try to save money by stretching change intervals too long. Fuel, insurance and depreciation are the biggest items that cost the most.