Ten Cheapest Cars To Own...

[Kal-El]

Originally Posted by tomato

on Car Talk, they were saying that the FIT is actually cheaper to own than the Yaris in the long run, when I was looking for a car. I wish I could find the link. I still went with the Yaris, though, with manual everything, and I just drive it conservatively. The Fit would have cost me more anyway because I would have had to finance it, and the rates were not that great back then, but I could afford to pay off the Yaris I got (Toyota didn't have 0% financing at the time or I might have looked at a new one).

So I'm guessing there are a lot of little variables like that, that they don't take into account and the CTO can vary depending on a lot more things.

Yeah, I don't believe that about the Mazda 3 either. Doesn't seem right.

Any way they try to add it up, a Fit is going to cost you more even in the long run.

- Initial cost - Fit is thousands more
- Fuel cost - Yaris wins again
- Maintenance cost - probably similar - basically just oil changes, new tires for the first 100K.
- Insurance - again, probably comparable.

What kind of math are they using?

And again, the Mazda 3's spot is laughable. It get's only a combined 26 mpg and starts at nearly $16K (for a rare base model that no one buys). It costs more to own than a Civic never mind the Fit that they rate below it.