seeking honest opinions on cost of ownership

[Mike Veglia]

I have had an '87 5kcstq since August of 1997 at 136k miles. Today the car
is ~194k miles. For four years this car was the primary road trip car for my
family and my daily driver. Recently it has been relegated to part time
daily driver (splitting the duties with my recently obtained '86 4kq) and
winter time family road trip car (my wife's ovloV 850 turbo wagon is now the
primary road tripper).

I have been fortunate with this car, I admit. It has been a really good one.
Also, there are a few things now that are deferred and need immediate
attention as well. Those include: front suspension bushings, ball joints,
etc., AC compressor and recharge, headliner, new summer tires soon, and due
soon for a major service and oil change. The kitty rattles badly and the EM
has the usual tick, tick, tick, when cold. The passenger's side seat heater
needs attention--again.

I do all my own maintenance on this car--nobody but me has worked on it
since 8/97 with the exception of tire mounting and alignments. I just did a
very rough estimation of what my cost of running this car for the past 5
years/60k miles has been and the total comes to around $3500.00 (not
including fuel). BTW, I only paid $2950.00 for the car in the first place.
That puts my maintenance costs at around $58.00 per month, or ~ 6 cents per
mile. Add in the purchase price of the car and I'm still out only $6500.00
for 5 years of driving a great car. OTOH, had I bought something new 5 years
ago and put 60k miles on it, I likely would have lost over $6k in
depreceation alone.