The Ford company is an American original. They have an expansive line of vehicles. Many of them don’t cost as much as some of the higher-end car brands that may be out of your price range.
If you visit Ennis Ford, you’ll be able to see a full line of the most recent Ford vehicles that might be perfect for you. While they have the safety features and affordable prices you want, that may not necessarily be what you’re looking for most as a driver.
Some individuals like to buy cars according to how much regular maintenance they need. These consumers might feel like they don’t want to go out of their way to take care of the car too much.
You will always need to do regular maintenance as a car owner, regardless of what brand you buy. However, maybe you are approaching the task of getting a new vehicle while prioritizing finding one that needs less maintenance than most.
Does Ford fit the bill?
That’s a question worth addressing, and we will do so in the following article.
Are You Buying New, Used, or Certified Pre-Owned?
If you’re looking at the Ford brand in terms of how easy it is to maintain the vehicle, then you’ll have to start by answering one vital question. Do you plan to buy one new, used, or certified pre-owned? We’ll answer this question as it applies to all three automotive conditions.
Let’s start by saying you’re going to buy a Ford vehicle that is brand new. If you’re looking at the 2024s and 2025s, that probably means you are willing to pay top dollar. You will doubtless be paying more than you would for the average used or certified pre-owned vehicle.
However, it would be accurate to say that if you buy a Ford vehicle brand new, you will not need to worry about the maintenance as much as you would with a certified pre-owned one, and certainly not as much as with a used one. With a brand-new car, you’re getting only pristine components.
That means the car is factory issued, expertly calibrated, and not likely to have anything wrong with it. When a Ford vehicle rolls off the assembly line, that is the time when you’ll have to do the least with it as an owner.
The average yearly cost to maintain something like a Ford Fusion, Escape, or Ranger should be less than $700 at most if you buy it new. If you purchase a Mustang, Explorer, F-150, or Expedition, all those should cost you less than $900 at most. That’s pretty reasonable, though the price will only go up if you buy one that has been previously used.
Buying a Ford Vehicle Certified Pre-Owned.
Buying a vehicle certified pre-owned is something you might not necessarily know that much about. If you don’t have a lot of prior experience purchasing cars, it’s worth understanding this option, though.
Certified pre-owned usually means the car had one previous owner. Maybe it was used for a year or two by a car rental company. It may have a few thousand miles on it, but probably no more than that.
As you might expect, such a car will not cost as much as a brand-new one, but it will also usually cost more than a used one. There’s a distinction that companies make between the terms “used” and “certified pre-owned.” A certified pre-owned car will need to go through a rigorous inspection process, usually conducted by the manufacturer.
If you buy one of the Ford models that we mentioned above certified pre-owned, it shouldn’t have very many miles on it, and it also should not be more than a couple of years old at most. When you do that, you might add a few hundred dollars to the list of maintenance prices that we mentioned above. While you might pay a little more to maintain the vehicle than you would if it was brand new, the overall cost should still be quite reasonable.
Buying a Ford Vehicle Used.
Once you start to get into the realm of buying Ford cars used, the costs that we mentioned earlier can potentially skyrocket. It’s almost impossible to put a price tag on how much it will cost to maintain a used Ford vehicle, though, because it might have 20,000 miles or 200,000 miles on it. Obviously, how much wear and tear the previous owner or owners put on it will make a huge difference.
In a general sense, you can expect to maintain components on your used Ford vehicle like the tires, engine oil, and the oil filter every 10,000 miles. You can expect to do a cabin air filter replacement every 20,000 miles. At every 30,000 miles, you will want to do an engine air filter replacement. At 100,000 miles on the road, you must do spark plug replacement and switch out the engine coolant.
None of those should cost you all that much. However, if the car you buy is used and it had several previous owners who didn’t treat it very well, the cost of yearly maintenance will be the least of your problems. You might need to tack on thousands of dollars to keep your vehicle running if any of the major components need to be replaced.
No two cars are alike once they are sold to their first owner, who will immediately start to use them. With that in mind, it’s difficult to put a precise dollar amount on what every Ford vehicle is going to cost you to maintain, either from the standpoint of how many miles you put on it or how much it’s going to cost on a yearly basis.
It’s best to keep a closer eye on older vehicles with more miles on them. Before you buy one used or certified pre-owned, it is helpful to get a mechanic to look it over to see if they spot anything particularly worrying.
