| Used 4th-gen Honda CR-V: Does it make sense in 2025?
TLDR:
Like the thread title suggests I wanted to sound off if the 4th gen CRV is a viable used car in 2025.
Now the long story of why in my head a used CRV fits me to a T.
Prologue;
My garage currently consists of the following:
1. 2012 Duster 110 purchased new done about 135k kms.
2. 2013 Micra cvt done 50k purchased used in 2022 at 30k kms.
3. 2003 Wagon R purchased new done about 50k kms.
The duster is used exclusively with a driver at present since due to a left knee problem I am unable to handle the duster's heavy clutch now.
Ideally I would like to replace this but mechanically it seems fine even though due to its age indo end up spending about 30k on average every service. Over the past couple of years it has seen a new clutch, a complete suspension overhaul including both drive shafts.
The car is used primarily to drop both kids at school and also to drive my mom and wife around town.
The duster has a service schedule of 10k kms. The last the car was serviced was in June of this year and I have noticed that it is due for a service already. 10k kms in 7 months translates to about 1400 kms a month on average. Considering a milage of 12 kmpl, fuel cost is around 12k a month.
If I do sell the car I can expect a price of around 2 lakhs om a great day.
In my mind it still makes sense to keep using this car and run it into the ground as a replacement/upgrade of a similar caliber will not make economic sense at the moment.
The car probably needs about 40-50k this service to get it in ship shape again. Needs new engine/gearbox mounts, a wiper motor, front wheel bearings and some seat covers.
The Micra was bought with the intention that my wife would practice driving to a stage where she feels confident to drive herself. However after nearly 6 months of it being hardly used I started feeling sorry for the car I slowly started driving the car on and off and over a couple of months I was pleased to find out that the source of my constant knee pain and occasional back pain was a lot better if I didn't drive the duster at all that particular day.
Now that I have a medical reason why as an automotive enthusiast I am unable to drive a manual anymore, I slowly started to realise that the school run of my 2 kids who go to 2 different schools that have 2 different times at which the kids need to be dropped and picked up was turning out to be a drive of 60kms a day and was having me devote nearly 3 hours of my time to complete this endeavour.
This was simply not sustainable in the long run.
For those of you wondering how one can spend 3 hours a day just dropping and picking up their kids from school; I am semi retired as in I do not work a regular office job.
However I was starting to feel the stress of driving 3 hours in traffic everyday and it was getting difficult managing my other commitments since I am not fully retired. This was when the duster was put back into action with a driver.
Also I am not comfortable using private transport sending the kids to school and I consider myself fortunate to be able to not use this mode of transport. My kids aged 3 and 5 still use age and size appropriate car seats when they are in the car and always have family member present when they are in the car.
Please bear with me as I truly meant it when I wrote TLDR.
Back to the Micra again:
Over the next couple of months I installed a set of new tyres, upgraded the audio system to a budget 3 way active system. Damped the car, serviced the cvt and the car is in ship shape mechanically
Life was good for about 2 years...
Now on the the last and least used car I the garage which is the Wagon R. This is mom's car and is used very rarely nowadays. Only on days the driver is on leave.
Sorry for the short diversion once again now on the main story of how I arrived at the decision of why I zeroed in on the CRV as the next car to complent the garage and sort of technically replace the Wagon R but not exactly in terms of usage.
The need for a different car came about over the past 6 months or so.
Last summer our family of 5 which even though consists of 2 small kids can be considered as 5 adults due to the car seats embarked on a 2000km drive over 2 weeks for which I had to borrow my grandfather's hycross since I obviously couldn't drive the duster and the Micra was too small. This initially sowed the seeds for a new car and during the drive the family and I had more or less finalised the Hycross with the exception that we would want a 8 seater instead of the 7 seater we were currently using.
In fact we booked a Hycross VX 8 seater within a week of returning back which after some careful financial calculations we shifted to GX(O) which was launched at the same time. We were told we would need to wait for 12 months since we had changed our variant. We were hopeful to have the car by summer 2025 to embark on our next road trip.
I have also recently have had to start travelling to a town about 150kms away once a week as a day trip usually. This entails about 6 hours drive time if I end up returning back the same day.
The Micra while a brilliant car for the city started to feel unsafe on a busy highway which though 4 lane is choc a bloc with slow moving vehicles that translates to an average speed of only 50kmph.
Since I have a lot more time on my hands over the past 2 years one of my favourite pass times was to look at ads for used 10 year old luxury diesels in Delhi. It then started to dawn on me that it makes no sense to buy a new car. Why would I want to spend 30 big ones on an Innova when I could have a Cayenne or X5 for 20 lakhs, an X1, X3, Q5, ML/GLE or a Q7 for 10.
However better sense started to prevail and I thought it would not be wise to spend so much on a used German as even though it might be a dream to drive, I can easily imagine the cars turning into nightmares to own.
However the Delhi dream was not dead, infact I doubled down. Now the plan changed to buy 2 cars instead of one. A sante fe diesel and a bmw 116i/328i. Logic was the sante fe would be a great highway cruiser and the beemer could be slowly modded to a track car.
For all those wondering where the CRV is in this whole monologue so far rest assured there are a few more characters err cars in the picture before the grand entry of the hero CRV akin to a Bollywood movie.
Moving forward to my situation with the heart of an auto enthusiast and a mind ticking of my heart with the economic realities of being semi retired.
Slowly started to realise that a long discontinued Hyundai diesel would not be as reliable as one would imagine, decided that I first need a reliable main car and only then would decide on a track toy.
Moved on to looking at Toyotas particularly the Crysta, Old fortuner, endeavour, new fortuner exclusively. In between I did let my mind wander onto a Pajero sports, Isuzu MUX, a Nissan Xtrail and even a unicorn the Chevrolet trailblazer.
The more I looked at these cars the more I realised that I don't need a big bulky BOF suv/muv for my use case.
Briefly went around to buying a new car again, went to TD the grand vitara, seltos, creta and taigun. They all felt too small, too expensive or too cheap inside.
By this point I had mentally decided not to spend more than 15 lakhs whether new or used. New would only get me a Grand Vitara non Hybrid which felt less spritely to drive than my Micra. Most new cars around this price range seemed to have focused more on the gadgets rather than the drivetrain.
Back to OLX filters applied but this time changed location to India instead of Delhi. This is where I discovered the CRVs of Mumbai.
4th gen CRVs which seem decent on paper all priced between 6-8 lakhs.
Slowly sat and did the numbers and even considering the abysmal milage the CRV is a great car, spacious, powerful, well put together and reliable. The only negative is the abysmal economy but I am okay with that as the car would be primarily used on highways and the poor economy will be made up by the substantial savings in upfront capital. For under 10 lakhs I can have a CRV registered in my home state and a lakh possibly two leftover for any incidentals after the purchase.
Am I missing something here?
If anyone has stuck around so far; please advise if the CRV seems like a fair choice.
P.S. I did consider the Tucson and have also test driven various cars form 2015-2017 and somehow did not connect with the car as much as I would have liked.
Also I am so sure that I have made the right choice that I have literally mapped out my entire ICE upgrade already. For those of you intersted it is as follows.
1. PIO 6650 HU with 9 inch screen and 3 way active capabilities built in. 25k
2. Metra harness and dash kit. 20k
3. 4 nos SKAR audio 6.5 inch midbass. USD 20 each
4. 2 nos SKAR audio tweeters USD 20 per pair
5. An old Ipaul 4.300 already with me.
6. Old Rainbow sub in a factory ported enclosure currently being used in the Micra.
The idea is that the HU will power the tweeters and the rear miss and the amp will drive the front mids and the sub.
I have been running a similar 3 way active setup without the rear fills in both the duster and the Micra.
I presume the HU will be able to drive the rear fills if not I can add a monobloc to power the sub and move the rear mids to the 4 channel amp. This would be kind of a hybrid 3 way active and I can use the gain in the amp to control the rear fills volume. In fact if I do get a mono I will try and find one that has a remote gain knob. The Ipaul already has one so I can have individual manual gain control of both the sub and rear fills at my fingertips.
With damping, wiring and installation I would still be under 1 lakh on the audio and this is something that I will end up doing anyway even if I get a new car.
Lastly in my case it would make economic sense even if the CRV gives 7-8kmpl on the highway as I am quite used to getting 11-12 in the Micra.
Happy new year everyone.
Last edited by cooldude1988765 : 1st January 2025 at 00:00.
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15th May 2024, 08:51
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Thanks
