Stick, upgrade, or complete change

[Welly]

When a car gets to nearly 200K miles it is no longer worth keeping on top of non-essential maintenance in my opinion. You may as well 'run it into the ground' for what it's worth to you in real money. The only time I'd keep throwing money at an old motor would be on something like a proper Mid-90's Merc and where I was committed to run the thing as a testament to engineering and live with it for many years.

Unfortunately the 406 was never going to stand in anyone's prestige car collection so as such are seen as disposable (like a Mondeo or Vectra) the 406's do a good job at what they left the factory to do but they weren't made to run for decades on end. Although the best at defending tin-rot I bet if you had a really good poke about behind the scenes of your T-reg you'll find a few horrible things going on

Keep it and change the oil regular but don't fix anything unless it fails completely, or, scrap it/sell it and put the money into something fresher - you will get far more reward doing this.

[Bailes1992]

My Mondeo will be pushing 200k in 3-4 years time.
I'm convinced it would still be able to double that mileage with ease!

After 100k the car feels like new, no rattles, no creeks etc etc.

[Welly]

My Mondeo will be pushing 200k in 3-4 years time.
I'm convinced it would still be able to double that mileage with ease!

After 100k the car feels like new, no rattles, no creeks etc etc.

I agree but yours will be 8/9 years old then and not the 14 years old the OP's will be.

Your Mondy will have spent the first 4 years cruising the motorways with the engine at optimum temp just racking up the miles in lazy gears, it's probably the equivalent of buying one with 30K miles which had been used about town all the time.

I believe it will be the electronic stuff that will let these new cars down eventually; they'll become expensive to repair and pretty much useless by 10 years old.

[Bailes1992]

My Mondeo will be pushing 200k in 3-4 years time.
I'm convinced it would still be able to double that mileage with ease!

After 100k the car feels like new, no rattles, no creeks etc etc.

I agree but yours will be 8/9 years old then and not the 14 years old the OP's will be.

Your Mondy will have spent the first 4 years cruising the motorways with the engine at optimum temp just racking up the miles in lazy gears, it's probably the equivalent of buying one with 30K miles which had been used about town all the time.

I believe it will be the electronic stuff that will let these new cars down eventually; they'll become expensive to repair and pretty much useless by 10 years old.

I totally agree with you!
I would like to think that when I try to sell it in 4 years time someone with half an ounce of common sense will buy it knowing that it will be fine for another 5 years+.
Problem is most people decide that if a car is over 100k then it's nackered. My car was sat in Carshop for 3 months before I bought it, the salesman said loads of people viewed it but nobody would take on a car with such high mileage.

People are idiots!

I go on about it all the time, but my Uncles C5 had just 24k on it after 4 years. He had to get rid of it because it was falling to bits and going wrong all the time!

[rwb]

So it seems to be 10-to-15 years that's the killer, not mileage per se.

I've always said it'll be electronics that'll kill mine, but in fact it's the bodywork that makes it a scrapper.

There are fewer surer ways to lose money than running a car. Whatever you have -- old or new -- you have to repair maintain it to keep it running. If you don't have capital then you're committed to repairing and maintaining what you've got. If you do have the capital then you can choose to repair and maintain something else.