Originally Posted by
inuvik
A Cruze diesel will never pencil out to being a better deal than the Mirage. Let's say the combined EPA rating of the Cruze is 45mpg. The Mirage's combined EPA rating is 40mpg. Using $3.00 a gallon as the cost of fuel for both models the Mirage costs $8.33 per thousand miles more to drive than the Cruze. I think your guess of about $10k difference between the MSRP of the Mirage and Cruze is a solid number. It would take 1,200,000 miles before you saved $10k in fuel compared to driving the Mirage. The reality is the only reason to buy a diesel Cruze would be you just gotta have one. With gasoline being cheaper than diesel consistently a diesel Cruze might actually be more expensive per 1,000 miles than the Mirage in fuel costs.
I made similar calculations comparing Mirage to car with better MPG and cheaper price, Prius C which is more likely to complete in terms of TOC. For C it would take 300 to 500k to get even, depending on maintainance and gas cost. If you are young male under 24, living in high density metropolitan area even at $5/gal any savings on gas from C will be wiped out by additional insurance costs, even if you uber, deliver pizza and newspapers and rack 60k a year.
The only car which could compete with Mirage is Spark or perhaps Versa due to lower maintenance costs.
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View my fuel log 2015 Mirage DE 1.2 manual: 46.4 mpg (US) ... 19.7 km/L ... 5.1 L/100 km ... 55.7 mpg (Imp)