My Experience with Ownership and Maintenance Costs of My Subaru STI

When I purchased my Subaru STI, I was excited to take it out for a spin and enjoy the thrill of driving such a high-performance vehicle. However, as I soon discovered, owning a car like this comes with significant expenses, particularly when it comes to maintenance costs. In this article, I'll walk you through my experience with ownership and maintenance costs of my Subaru STI, including the breakdown of my costs and how they compare to other vehicles.

One of the biggest expenses I encountered was oil changes. As a responsible owner, I wanted to make sure my car was well-maintained, so I scheduled regular oil changes every 5,000 miles or as needed. However, I also realized that it's possible to change the oil only once a year at $50, which would have saved me money in the long run. Despite this, maintenance costs still came out to $460 for the vehicle, including some aftermarket parts such as a roof rack and ski rack. These additional expenses added up to around $500, bringing my total expenditure on parts and maintenance to $960.

Another significant expense I incurred was interest on financing. To minimize my debt, I tried to pay off the car fairly quickly, which meant taking out a smaller loan with lower monthly payments. This approach allowed me to reduce my overall interest paid to just $100 over 27 months. With this amount included, my total monthly expenditure came out to around $395 per month.

Over the course of 27 months, I spent a total of $1,279 on ownership and maintenance costs for my Subaru STI. While this may seem like a significant amount, it's worth noting that the car depreciates relatively little over time, which is one reason why the cost of ownership is lower than expected. In fact, considering its initial price of around $40,000, the total expenditure comes out to less than 3% of the vehicle's original value.

To put this into perspective, let's consider a different scenario where I drove an average of 12,000 miles per year, which would have significantly increased my fuel costs and depreciation. In this case, my monthly expenditure would have been around $537, including fuel, insurance, and maintenance. Over the course of a year, this would have added up to approximately $6,400.

It's also worth noting that the cost of ownership varies depending on how much you drive the car. For example, with an average annual mileage of 12,000 miles, the per-mile cost of driving the vehicle drops significantly, from around $0.80 per mile in my original scenario to just $0.54 per mile.

In addition to its depreciation and fuel costs, the resale value of a used Subaru STI can also impact your ownership expenses. In my case, I'm selling the car for a relatively low price due to its age and mileage, which means I won't be recouping any significant amount of money from its sale. This highlights the importance of considering all aspects of ownership costs when making purchasing decisions.

Finally, let's take a look at how the cost of owning a Subaru STI compares to another vehicle in my collection, an Acura Integra. With an average annual mileage of 9,000 miles, my monthly expenditure on this car comes out to around $236 per month, or approximately $2,800 per year. This represents a significant decrease compared to the STI, which I purchased for around twice as much money.

Overall, owning a high-performance vehicle like the Subaru STI can be expensive, but with careful planning and maintenance, it's possible to keep costs under control. By understanding how depreciation, fuel costs, and other expenses impact your ownership expenditures, you can make more informed purchasing decisions and enjoy driving a car that meets your needs without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to be doing something a little bit different and I'm going to be breaking down the total cost of ownership for my Subaru STI I was kind of curious since I recently sold the vehicle uh you know how much did it actually cost me to own this vehicle uh for those 27 months uh since I bought it brand new and sold it shortly after and I thought you know what this might actually help someone out there uh making a financial decision on buying a car and so I thought you know what why not just make it into a video anyways um and let me just preface this why by saying if you're look to make the smartest financial decision on buying a vehicle um buying something used and reliable is pretty much the safest bet you can go with buying something new typically they're going to depreciate quite a bit you're going to lose a ton of money in that um and so you know if you're just looking for the smartest financial decision uh used and reliable are the two things you want to look for um but you know let's dive into what it actually costs me and the crazy thing about this uh really is that subar STI They Don't depreciate especially in the Northwest where I live um and as as a result of that this data is kind of skewed because if it were other vehicle uh which did depreciate quite a bit it would look uh much less in my favor as far as how the finances worked out so I bought my vehicle brand new all said and done all fees and everything included taxes things like that uh for $ 37,76131 exact so I only took a hit of $476 which is pretty minimal I think if you were to look at any other new car out there from 2014 uh that cost about 40 Grand uh I I highly doubt any of those would be selling for just $5,000 less so it's pretty incredible um it was the hatchback so it kind of retained its value because of that since they no longer make it okay so that's the car itself on a per month basis uh looking at 17650 which is actually quite low I think if you were to lease a Subaru SCI it might be double or even triple that um and so you know that's where that dealer is making tons of money as leasing that to you uh because they don't depreciate all that much and so uh moving on to fuel uh so what I did here I drove the car 14,100 Mi that's what I sold it at um and I averaged about 23 m per gallon and that's also a little bit high for this vehicle um but I tend to be a pretty efficient driver you can have fun and then you can also Drive efficiently I also did quite a bit of big trips um and I tend to do pretty well on those bigger trips get in the you know mid to slightly higher 20s uh on longer trips in there and so I average 23 total for the vehicle uh if you divide that that gives you 613 gallons of gas I took an average price of $3.25 per gallon and that gives us about two grand uh total fuel cost for the vehicle or about $74 per month I know this number 1992 is different from here it's just rounding differences but six bucks no big deal okay so moving on insurance is also a pretty big hit with this vehicle this is completely state dependent um so Oregon has pretty high Insurance prices uh when I lived in North Carolina my insurance for my Integra was something like 50 bucks and then I moved here to Oregon and it's like $110 for a super old piece of crap um and so you know it's unfortunate but the insurance here is pretty high what's surprising is it wasn't very different for my STI I did find that pretty strange but anyways $128 a month um you know over the 27 months about $3,500 maintenance this really could be a much smaller number I've got $17 a month here um honestly it's because I change my oil way too frequently uh but basically every 6 months I would swap from my summer to winter tires and while I was swapping those tires I just had them change the oil anyways uh so swapping the tires was 50 bucks and the oil change was 50 bucks so it was about $100 every 6 months uh for maintenance um and like I said you don't have to do that it could have been you know one oil change a year at 50 bucks uh and it would have been a little bit cheaper but either way maintenance came out to $460 for the vehicle some aftermarket parts I did buy a few things for it uh roof rack ski rack things like that about $500 worth of Parts interest I tried to pay off the car fairly quickly because I don't like paying interest um so I didn't spend much in interest at all on financing um I didn't you know like pay it over you know five years or something like that where you'd be spending a couple Grand in interest so I only spent about $100 in interest so total per month just based on the monthly items here $ 39550 so about $400 a month um and then you add that all up the total cost for me uh for those 27 months was $1,279 and honestly like that's a pretty big number yes uh but considering how little this car depreciates that's why this number is so good um and it and honestly isn't that bad of a number considering what the car was a $40,000 car there's some different variables at play um so I didn't drive much obviously because I'm in pressed cars quite frequently so this number would be a lot higher let's say it was an average of 12,000 M or about 1,000 M uh a month 12,000 a year uh that would here we've got a different lineup um comparing that so if we have here's my cost per month 418 including this aftermarket and uh the interest uh versus if I were to actually put 27,000 Mi on on that duration you'd have a little bit more depreciation and you of course would have more fuel cost uh and so as a result uh 537 a month uh be more realistic um and then about $6,400 per year now the per mile that it cost me to drive that vehicle over its ownership 80 cents per mile so every time you know one of those ticks that was that was almost a dollar which is kind of crazy to think about um but yeah that's what we pay for these days uh if you put a lot more miles on it that number goes down 54 C now this number also is slightly misleading just because depreciation isn't that high Kelly Blue Book for my car was 33 uh Kelly Blue Book for a car with 27,000 Mi on it was 31 so just a $2,000 loss for that many more miles I don't know if that's realistic or not if you could actually get 31,000 for it but you know perhaps um so and then just for fun I threw in my Integra here to see what the total cost of ownership of that is I'll be selling that very soon um $236 per month which I own this car for 9 years um about $2,800 per year or about 57 cents per mile now that's higher than this uh and that's slightly misleading for two reasons first of all I didn't put many miles on it uh per year and that's why this is high it would be a lot uh lower if I put more miles on it second of all I am donating uh whatever I sell the Integra for to a nonprofit that I'm a big fan of um so I'm not including uh the fact that you know well I am including the fact that I'm I'm getting zero uh as far as the resale for this vehicle because I'm donating it um so you know this number would actually be lower uh and the smartest decision you just be getting something used um and you know obviously on a monthly basis it's far cheaper and so that's something that's be more important because you don't know how much you'll be actually driving uh so the Integra by far the cheapest about half the price of the other two but it was pretty interesting uh that the STI wasn't all that expensive for me over those 27 months um all things considered I mean the majority of it going to be you know Fuel and insurance um you know the car itself is less than 50% of the cost now as I mentioned depreciation plays a huge role here so most new cars are going to come out much less favorable than the math which I just showed but you know that might be helpful to you guys out there um thank you guys for watching and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below hello everyone and welcome a slightly sad tone and fairly appropriate that it's raining because in this video I'm going to be talking about why I am selling my Subaru STI now the biggest reason I think that it comes down to is that I didn't really know what I liked when I bought this vehicle I bought the STI before I had ever done any Automotive journalism before I had sat in any press carhello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to be doing something a little bit different and I'm going to be breaking down the total cost of ownership for my Subaru STI I was kind of curious since I recently sold the vehicle uh you know how much did it actually cost me to own this vehicle uh for those 27 months uh since I bought it brand new and sold it shortly after and I thought you know what this might actually help someone out there uh making a financial decision on buying a car and so I thought you know what why not just make it into a video anyways um and let me just preface this why by saying if you're look to make the smartest financial decision on buying a vehicle um buying something used and reliable is pretty much the safest bet you can go with buying something new typically they're going to depreciate quite a bit you're going to lose a ton of money in that um and so you know if you're just looking for the smartest financial decision uh used and reliable are the two things you want to look for um but you know let's dive into what it actually costs me and the crazy thing about this uh really is that subar STI They Don't depreciate especially in the Northwest where I live um and as as a result of that this data is kind of skewed because if it were other vehicle uh which did depreciate quite a bit it would look uh much less in my favor as far as how the finances worked out so I bought my vehicle brand new all said and done all fees and everything included taxes things like that uh for $ 37,76131 exact so I only took a hit of $476 which is pretty minimal I think if you were to look at any other new car out there from 2014 uh that cost about 40 Grand uh I I highly doubt any of those would be selling for just $5,000 less so it's pretty incredible um it was the hatchback so it kind of retained its value because of that since they no longer make it okay so that's the car itself on a per month basis uh looking at 17650 which is actually quite low I think if you were to lease a Subaru SCI it might be double or even triple that um and so you know that's where that dealer is making tons of money as leasing that to you uh because they don't depreciate all that much and so uh moving on to fuel uh so what I did here I drove the car 14,100 Mi that's what I sold it at um and I averaged about 23 m per gallon and that's also a little bit high for this vehicle um but I tend to be a pretty efficient driver you can have fun and then you can also Drive efficiently I also did quite a bit of big trips um and I tend to do pretty well on those bigger trips get in the you know mid to slightly higher 20s uh on longer trips in there and so I average 23 total for the vehicle uh if you divide that that gives you 613 gallons of gas I took an average price of $3.25 per gallon and that gives us about two grand uh total fuel cost for the vehicle or about $74 per month I know this number 1992 is different from here it's just rounding differences but six bucks no big deal okay so moving on insurance is also a pretty big hit with this vehicle this is completely state dependent um so Oregon has pretty high Insurance prices uh when I lived in North Carolina my insurance for my Integra was something like 50 bucks and then I moved here to Oregon and it's like $110 for a super old piece of crap um and so you know it's unfortunate but the insurance here is pretty high what's surprising is it wasn't very different for my STI I did find that pretty strange but anyways $128 a month um you know over the 27 months about $3,500 maintenance this really could be a much smaller number I've got $17 a month here um honestly it's because I change my oil way too frequently uh but basically every 6 months I would swap from my summer to winter tires and while I was swapping those tires I just had them change the oil anyways uh so swapping the tires was 50 bucks and the oil change was 50 bucks so it was about $100 every 6 months uh for maintenance um and like I said you don't have to do that it could have been you know one oil change a year at 50 bucks uh and it would have been a little bit cheaper but either way maintenance came out to $460 for the vehicle some aftermarket parts I did buy a few things for it uh roof rack ski rack things like that about $500 worth of Parts interest I tried to pay off the car fairly quickly because I don't like paying interest um so I didn't spend much in interest at all on financing um I didn't you know like pay it over you know five years or something like that where you'd be spending a couple Grand in interest so I only spent about $100 in interest so total per month just based on the monthly items here $ 39550 so about $400 a month um and then you add that all up the total cost for me uh for those 27 months was $1,279 and honestly like that's a pretty big number yes uh but considering how little this car depreciates that's why this number is so good um and it and honestly isn't that bad of a number considering what the car was a $40,000 car there's some different variables at play um so I didn't drive much obviously because I'm in pressed cars quite frequently so this number would be a lot higher let's say it was an average of 12,000 M or about 1,000 M uh a month 12,000 a year uh that would here we've got a different lineup um comparing that so if we have here's my cost per month 418 including this aftermarket and uh the interest uh versus if I were to actually put 27,000 Mi on on that duration you'd have a little bit more depreciation and you of course would have more fuel cost uh and so as a result uh 537 a month uh be more realistic um and then about $6,400 per year now the per mile that it cost me to drive that vehicle over its ownership 80 cents per mile so every time you know one of those ticks that was that was almost a dollar which is kind of crazy to think about um but yeah that's what we pay for these days uh if you put a lot more miles on it that number goes down 54 C now this number also is slightly misleading just because depreciation isn't that high Kelly Blue Book for my car was 33 uh Kelly Blue Book for a car with 27,000 Mi on it was 31 so just a $2,000 loss for that many more miles I don't know if that's realistic or not if you could actually get 31,000 for it but you know perhaps um so and then just for fun I threw in my Integra here to see what the total cost of ownership of that is I'll be selling that very soon um $236 per month which I own this car for 9 years um about $2,800 per year or about 57 cents per mile now that's higher than this uh and that's slightly misleading for two reasons first of all I didn't put many miles on it uh per year and that's why this is high it would be a lot uh lower if I put more miles on it second of all I am donating uh whatever I sell the Integra for to a nonprofit that I'm a big fan of um so I'm not including uh the fact that you know well I am including the fact that I'm I'm getting zero uh as far as the resale for this vehicle because I'm donating it um so you know this number would actually be lower uh and the smartest decision you just be getting something used um and you know obviously on a monthly basis it's far cheaper and so that's something that's be more important because you don't know how much you'll be actually driving uh so the Integra by far the cheapest about half the price of the other two but it was pretty interesting uh that the STI wasn't all that expensive for me over those 27 months um all things considered I mean the majority of it going to be you know Fuel and insurance um you know the car itself is less than 50% of the cost now as I mentioned depreciation plays a huge role here so most new cars are going to come out much less favorable than the math which I just showed but you know that might be helpful to you guys out there um thank you guys for watching and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below hello everyone and welcome a slightly sad tone and fairly appropriate that it's raining because in this video I'm going to be talking about why I am selling my Subaru STI now the biggest reason I think that it comes down to is that I didn't really know what I liked when I bought this vehicle I bought the STI before I had ever done any Automotive journalism before I had sat in any press car\n"