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-   -   ARTICLE: YOUR 5 year old car : Keep, Upgrade or Swap? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/owning-car/44804-article-your-5-year-old-car-keep-upgrade-swap-63.html)

I finally had to let go of my pre-owned 2005 Esteem after 10 years of fuss-free ownership. The car had clocked 95 k km when I exchanged it for a Ciaz AT. The car was still in good shape and was my daily driver (30 km weekday drives).

Regular services were not a problem as MASS was eager to make money. Replacement of belts etc turned out to be a challenge as parts were not easily available. I had tried a couple of FNG’s but spending time on resoving minor issues did not seem a priority for them. They are businesses at the end of the day.

Ultimately, knee pain and the looming re-registration hassles finally decided the shift.

I would consider maintainability of the car as a factor for deciding when to go in for a new car also.

Engineered products reliability is a bath-tub shaped curve (reliability vs time), so there are more failures in the early stages of life, then the products tend to stabilize, and towards the end of life, failure rates rise again.

Leaving asides the gizmos, or some revolutionary new technology, the basic utility value of any product is going to be low in the beginning, then keep rising till it is cheaper to replace than repair. One indicator is cost/availability of repairs, the other is rising failure rates.


Manufacturers, know this only too well, and hence try to push customers towards buying a replacement by introducing new 'features', choking supplies of spares for old models. offering great deals on 'upgrades' etc to push sales.


What a user should do is carefully evaluate his needs and expectations from his car, and then make a replace or repair decision. However, we dont know what the designed life of the product is hence end up taking a conservative call. As an example, my friend bought a Daewoo Matiz in 2001, on my recommendation. The company shut down, parts are difficult to source, and there are no ASS's, but thanks to FNGs, his car still runs well, and gives him the same mileage as it did in 2001. There have been NO major repairs, no body rust etc. He did have an urge to upgrade when the EMI's were paid off, but somehow he avoided it and is thankful now for it.



Now, he wants to upgrade to a city, while I'm advising him to go for BR-V or Jazz, as these cars are more practical and have higher bang for the buck than City. He agrees, but I know his heart is set on City's iconic status.

Greetings to fellow Bhpians

So my daily drive, a Swift Dzire vxi with cng completed 10 years recently. An itch of upgrade has started now but the car has a mileage of 27K only (it was literally parked for the initial 4-5 years :deadhorse ).Considering my family bought 3 new cars this year, the options I have are:

1. Keep it for 5 more years (I live in Delhi) and then get a new car from the C-2 segment.
2. Have a lateral upgrade now by getting a used car in a budget of 5 lakhs maximum. A petrol manual/ automatic would be required and will be converted to cng. It should be a sedan, and should not be more than 8 years old and must be reliable. The cars fitting my requirements were a couple of Honda Citys, Civics and Toyota Corolla Altis. I do not want another Maruti and since I own a Creta petrol, Verna petrol doesn't make sense since its the same engine. The car will be used for city use only and occasionally on the highways. My monthly usage has a range of 2500-3000 kms now.

What should I do? All suggestions are welcome and mistakes to be forgiven.

Cheers!
Ankit

Always follow your Advice. I have a 2014 Jan Ford Figo and it has clocked only 22K till date. It glides at 140 easily with AC on and we do not even notice the speed. Recently it started vibrating as soon as I cross speed 80 on speedometer. I am told there is issue with two tires. i am planning to get them changes via Saiffe(you recommended). I was thinking of selling this car and buy an Eco Sport and reading this article I started reconsidering. What would you advice? Should i retain Figo for few more years?
Thanks

Any particular reason for wanting to sell it? With the vibration issue gone post the tyre change and only 22k on the ODO, your car seems to be in its prime, if not infancy. lol:

I have 2013 Feb santro at 42K kms. Last year I changed all tyres for 21K, 5 michelins. This year the battery. Planning to keep for next 2 years. Run is not much but to be honest maintenance is going way high. Last year 10.5K. This year 12.5K that included the front tyre disks replacement. Battery added 4K extra and a punctured silencer replacement at 6K. Clutch is going bad. But no matter what it is I need to pay a few thousands to maintain it per year vs. Paying a few lacs for new car. This is better deal any day since the engine still has much more life. It runs like butter. clap:

Sold a Santro in the family after 13 years and close to 1L KMs. The engine was in immaculate condition and running like butter. There were absolutely no issues with the car just sold because it was 13+ years old.

Santro's maintenance cost is always on the higher side. I now have a firm belief that all Hyundai's are expensive to maintain but are generally troublefree.
The best part about Santro is its a very reliable car and only needs to be serviced once a year.

Tyre change @4years and 35~40K KM is ok.
Battery change @5years is ok too.

These seem to be on the higher side. Were you made to pay for unnecessary stuff like blower cleaning, interior cleaning etc?
By tyre disks do you mean wheel caps or brake disks?

I too ended up paying about 10K and 20K last two years on my 9 year old A-Star including tyre change, new wheel caps, new battery and regular service.
Tyres were MRF ZLX @12K for 4 and service was stringently supervised to avoid un-necessary stuff.

This seems like a pre-mature failure.

Good enough reason to retain it. More so for the low end torque and compact dimensions in Bangalore traffic. :)

Sure but my two michelins too got punctured in last two months. Nothing to blame but the real big nails on roads. Could not be helped.

Only required stuff and estimate was around 8K. Brake was making brushing sound for a while. They had tried cleaning the disks multiple times but the real reason for damage was the car washing guys throwing water on tyres and car run is not so heavy causing the disks to get rusted at places. Got a call from service guys for that and I too agreed to get them changed. This added some 4K extra making the final bill to swell to 12.5K.

Michelins are indeed expensive but the fun you get is amazing. My older estilo had MRFs, drove for 5 years but finally when changed to michelins it was amazing experience, both for ride quality and FE. Santro had goodyear and they gave my 4-5 punctures last year, one tyre had side wall damaged. Hence got all of them replaced.

Aah, same question I asked to service person. Reason is due to temperature difference (can you make any sense in that? It was a rusted pipe). Not sure what it is.

Cross posting from another thread.
I own 2013 ecosport diesel which has run 85000 kms. The car is mostly trouble free and I am in no mood of selling it. But sometimes it makes me feel uncomfortable that my car doesnt have ABS and airbags. Add to this the ongoing speculations, that the diesel cars will be uneregistered after 10 years of ownership just increases uneasiness.
If I think of changing the car, I have chosen Ignis delta as replacement. Now the question is which car is more safe, ecosport without ABS and airbags or ignis with ABS and airbags. (Car is mostly used on highway but sedately driven. We are a family of 3 which like travelling to far flung himalayas once a year.)

My recommendation is to keep your oldie. Lack of ABS/Airbags does not make it useless. I drove my 2013 Santro (and still driving it) on real long drives, no ABS, no airbags and just seat belts. And replacing Ford ecosport with an Ignis, no way in my opinion. Ford is Ford and Maruti is Maruti.
As far as diesel is concerned, just do not buy a new diesel car if you have that uncomfortable thought. But I feel you should keep the Ford for next few years.

Ignis would not be any match for the Ecosport in terms of power, handling, dynamics and build quality. It would be a significant downgrade in my view.

Why don't you look at the new Ecosport (budget permitting)? It is a substantial upgrade over your old car with all its new features, design and so one, and also promises the same benefits of build quality, reliability as well as fun to drive engines as the earlier outgoing Ecosport.

Well well.. lack of ABS and airbags is not something you have to be so concerned about (to the point of selling a car). ABS prevents crashes and airbags prevent what happens after crashes. The forces one experiences during the crash, which also decide its severity, depends on a car's structure.

EcoSport to Ignis would be a drastic downgrade. Your car has a solid construction and that plays a decent role in its crash worthiness. Picking the Ignis, that is built on the 2-star rated HEARTECT platform, doesn't make any sense. If I was given a choice between the two, I would still pick an EcoSport without airbags.

If you have had enough of the EcoSport, go for a Tata Nexon or something. If not, hold on to it for another 3-5 years and save up for a substantial upgrade. Who knows, 6 airbags would be the norm by then. Until then, respect your car's limits, belt up and drive carefully. :)

Sir, irrespective of diesel or petrol, if budget/size is not a constraint, i would say replace the ecosport with the newer ecosport model. The newer batch ones should have ABS & Airbags from bottom variants too. Nexon too is a 5 * GNCAP car now, totally worth consideration. If going in hatch segment, i would prefer a Freestyle(top 2 variants) because of the GC, safety kit, build, & airbags. Thought of saying Polo too, since it is nicely built. But you mentioned himalayas, and i am not sure. Freestyle should go everywhere an ecosport can go.

Choose IGNIS, if you have a lot of divine grace in your account:) I have seen people come out un-harmed in accidents (in not so well built vehicles) at serious speeds by just using seatbelts, i felt they were partially also cashing their grace balance cheques. I will recommend you to get a sturdy model with ABS & 2 Airbags as minimum.

Update: It has been decided to keep the car as of now with some mechanical and cosmetic upgrades. That would help me with the itch to upgrade to an extent for a couple of years :) . The car will be then exchanged with a C segment sedan probably in the future.

Cheers!