How to Calculate Exotic Car Cost of Ownership

So you are interested in buying a Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce, or some other exotic car? If you are looking to figure out how to do that, this Guide on How to Buy Your First Exotic Car – read this. This post should help you figure out how much that is really going to cost you once you do that. Here is a guide to start.

For the sake of this let’s use a value of $100k and 5k miles per year.

You need to begin by defining the major variables that contribute to ownership costs.

Maintenance – Pretty much all of these cars require a service every 12 months or 7500 miles. You really do need to do these because it is nearly impossible to sell a poorly maintained car. These services will be anywhere from $1,000-2,000 so let’s use $1,500 per year for this calculation. $1,500/5,000=$.30/mile

Consumables – Tires are good for about 10k miles in most exotic cars and generally will cost you about $2,000 including mounting, balancing, and an alignment every other set. That comes to about $.20. Clutch use varies. On a single clutch sequential car such as an Aston Martin Vantage, Lamborghini Gallardo, or Ferrari F430 you are likely to get about 20k miles out of a clutch at a cost of approximately $6k including parts and labor. Brakes are approximately $3,000 and average life is 30k miles. That is a total of $.60/mile for consumables.

Gas – Estimate $4 per gallon and 10 mpg = $.40

Insurance – Estimate $150 per month. $1,800/yr/5000 miles = $.36/mile.

Time Value of Money – Even if you own it outright you are giving up the chance to invest elsewhere. Interest 5% = $5,000/5,000 miles. $1.00/mile.

Depreciation – There rules of thumb that get tossed around. They are $1 per mile, 10% per year or 1% per month. There are good cases for any of these. The key variables that would shift this are age and waiting list/desirability. You may find that a new Aventador or P1 depreciates far less than that but as the car get 3-10 years old, these tend to hold fairly close. Let’s call this $1 per mile.

Let’s total that up:
Maintenance = $.30
Consumables = $.60
Gas = $.40
Insurance = $.36
Interest = $1.00
Depreciation = $1.00

Total cost per mile of average exotic car ownership = $3.66.