You've likely heard the car-purchase wisdom that a new car's value plummets the moment you drive it out of the dealership. You can't stop depreciation, but you can reduce its effects by taking care of the car properly. The need to reduce depreciation is even stronger for luxury cars. If this is the first time you've purchased a luxury vehicle, you do not want the value to go too low, even if you plan to keep the car for years. The car's value affects everything from resale and trade-in values to whether or not your insurance company will pay for it in full if it's in an accident. The higher you keep that value, the better.
Protect and Preserve That Warranty
Your car comes with various warranties, and you want to keep those warranties intact. This is important for any car, but when luxury vehicles are involved, it's a lot easier to accidentally void the warranty by taking the car in for repair at an unauthorized shop.
Luxury car repairs often cost more than non-luxury car repairs. The temptation to just get the next oil change somewhere cheaper or get the tires balanced at your previous mechanic's shop is great; having a high income doesn't mean you don't want to save money. But work done at these shops, if the shops are not authorized to do warranty work on your car, can create more problems than it fixes. If something goes wrong at the unauthorized shop, for example, the dealer may not be able to honor your warranty anymore because you have introduced "unknown" work into the car's system.
Follow the Maintenance Schedule
Luxury vehicles have that status because they are built and fine-tuned to run very smoothly — and waiting on maintenance or repair can cause the way the car runs to go out of balance. This procrastination can set off a chain reaction where other parts of the car experience more stress than necessary, which wears them down prematurely. That can make the value of the car plummet.
You can think of owning a luxury car as the same as owning a non-luxury car but with more emphasis on taking care of maintenance and repairs by the book. If you want to preserve the value of the car as much as possible, it's crucial that all work be done on time and by an authorized service center, such as the one at your dealership. By driving carefully and taking good care of the exterior, you can keep your car's value fairly high.
For more information about luxury cars, visit a luxury car dealership.