22nd Feb 2025, 17:22
This is the original reviewer providing a one-year update for my 2010 Cadillac DTS. Since the previous update, I have put 8,298 miles on the car and the odometer now stands at 111,004 miles. During that interval, I have replaced the windshield wipers and had the oil changed twice. I also had the orange coolant assessed and had the rear brakes inspected. They still make a howling noise, but after several visits to the garage and a second opinion, no-one can find a mechanical problem and they all assure me that the brakes are safe. So I guess I have to live with the howling until it's time to replace the pads again and then I can explore different options for pad material. Perhaps ceramic will be less inclined to howl.
I am pleased that there were no repairs during this segment. Have I turned the corner? My graph of the cumulative average expense seems to have peaked at around 89,000 miles. Since then, the slope of the curve has been slightly negative, going from an average of 26 cents per mile at 89,000 miles to currently 20 cents per mile. If this keeps up, I may have to retract my statement about it being a money pit. With luck, the issues I had before 90,000 miles are the same as other cars that have those issues at 120,000 miles and hopefully they are behind me now.
About 5,500 miles of this year's interval was highway miles, so the car continues to serve the purpose of a road trip car. I drove it to the upper mid-west twice, each a 950 mile one-way drive. In October we drove it through the Appalachians to South Carolina and Charleston, then back home via the Blue Ridge Parkway (beginning in Virginia because of the storm damage in North Carolina) and Skyline Drive on vacation. The car did a great job, was comfortable and got good mileage on all trips. It's still the vehicle my wife prefers for road trips. I put it away for the winter in December to keep salt and corrosion off of it, but we're looking forward to taking it out again for the road trip season.
I have put about 43,000 miles on it now. Even though I have spent nearly $9,000 on it, I feel more that it's earning its keep and it has kept 43,000 miles off the 2017 Explorer I bought new. The Explorer would have 110,000 miles on it right now if not for the Cadillac, and I might be feeling a little glum about seeing the car I bought new for $32,000 now have 110,000 miles on it. So we will hope things keep going well in the coming year, and I'll provide the next update in a year or sooner if something catastrophic happens.
18th Feb 2024, 17:54
This is the original reviewer posting a one-year update for my 2010 Cadillac DTS. Current mileage is 102,706 miles, which means I have put about 5,600 miles on the car over the past year. It would normally have been a couple of thousand more, but I've had a little project going on at my second home about a thousand miles away and had also wanted to do some hiking accessible off dirt tracks, so driving my 2017 Explorer made more sense last year. Still, the good news is that there were no repairs, though I should hope so with such an abbreviated interval.
I had the oil changed and tires rotated at 100,586 miles at a cost of $200. I had the spark plugs, air filter, and cabin air filter changed at 101,016 miles at a cost of $500.
I looked back at my records and can quantify what I'd said about this car being more expensive than others I've owned. For years, I've graphed expenses and mileage in Excel spreadsheets, and fit a linear curve to a graph of miles versus cumulative cost. For the Cadillac DTS, with a correlation coefficient of 0.97 and R squared value of 0.95, the slope of that linear regression line shows I've spent $1,000 every 5,000 miles for an average 20-25 cents per mile. This is maintenance and repairs, not gasoline. For comparison, my 2002 Ford Explorer, with a correlation coefficient of 0.98 and R squared value of 0.97 defined a linear regression slope that showed I spent $1,000 every 10,000 miles for an average of about 10 cents per mile, including the $3,750 I paid for it at a repo auction. And the king, my 1985 Dodge Ramcharger with a correlation coefficient of 0.94 and R squared value of 0.90 defined a linear regression with a slope showing I spent $1,000 every 15,000 miles for an average cost of 7-8 cents per mile. Of course, the money spent on the Ramcharger and 2002 Explorer are in dollars of the early 2000s, so inflation may be a consideration for direct comparison to nearly 20 years ago.
Still, it's enough to show how many repairs the Cadillac has needed compared to my two previous used cars. It should be said, though, that the Ramcharger benefited from being simple and an earlier era vehicle that I could work on myself to a large degree. That in itself can show you that for somebody strapped for cash, as I was 20 years ago just trying to get on my feet with my first real job out of graduate school, driving a cheap old car that you can work on yourself will be a huge benefit to helping avoid a car payment and torpedoing your financial future.
For the final comparison, the maintenance on my 2017 Explorer works out to an average of $1,000 every 40,000 miles, but because I paid something like $32,000 for it, that works out to an average of about 50 cents per mile. That's double the Cadillac, which I paid nothing for and kind of consider to be a money pit. I know this site is about cars and not finances, but if I had a chance to share a little tip from my 50-some years, I'd say avoid the attractive looking money pits and avoid the new car payment. If your goal is to impress others, it's not working. Get a cheap beater, save up the cash you would have spent on car payments, and someday you will be very glad. That person in the new, or worse yet, used but recently financed, BMW next to you at the light is probably more broke than you are!