Right. But even the whole "maintenance exceeds the value of your car" thing is a bit murky. Taking a car worth $2k and paying $4k to have the power train replac

Right. But even the whole "maintenance exceeds the value of your car" thing is a bit murky. Taking a car worth $2k and paying $4k to have the power train replaced with a new one isn’t going to make it worth $6k, sure. But if that means your car will last another 200k miles and you aren’t bothered by driving a vehicle that old, you’re still coming out on top. I think that mostly comes from advice saying "look, if you’re like most other people, you’ll get bored of the car before what you’re replacing fails. So you’re just throwing money into the fire if you sell it in the next few years".