Doing the math.

We are re-thinking the Rangie situation.
Follow along and see if there is a flaw in my line of thought here…..

We need to add around 4 grand to the sale price of the Rangie to get an economical car that is not too old (we tend to hang on to our cars longer than the 2-3 years most people over here).
In 4-5 years, Terry will be done with collage and who knows what sort of car we will need at that stage.
So, thinking was, what does that 4 grand do for us in the mean time?

Rough numbers.
$4K is around 1000 gallons of petrol.
At 14mpg, the Rangie would get around 14,000 miles on that much gas.
We reset the Rangie trip meter 2 weeks ago and Freddy went about her usual business.
Reading the trip meter today shows 35 miles (at an average speed of 17mph incidentally).
So in two weeks, she has done just 35 miles, with 1000 gallons of petrol, she will take around 15 years to use our $4000 bucks of gas? (Where is Terry (math boy) when you need him?).
Yes, I know the price of fuel will go up, and yes, in some weeks she will do more miles, but I doubt things would change that much?

In other words, why buy another car, when we just change rolls for the car and look at selling it in 5 years for what ever we can get from it, or pass it on to Terry if he only needs to do low miles to get to work and back at that stage…..
In the mean time, our 4k is probably better spent paying off the house and refinancing to get our mortgage insurance costs down? (Or something like that).

It just does not seem worth selling what is a really reliable car that we have put some money into getting it reliable and spending more money to buy an unknown (but newer) car.

Sanity check anyone?