How much does car mileage affect car value?

When it comes time to calculating how much your car is worth there are a plethora of factors to consider. These factors include trim, extras, condition, age and service history to name just a few.

Another key factor to consider when valuing a car is its mileage. This can have a large impact on the value of a car as the total number of miles climbs higher. However, there’s a basic rule of thumb that you can use to roughly calculate car mileage depreciation.

Car mileage can be grouped into sets of 20,000 miles. For example, up to 20k miles, up to 40k miles, up to 60k miles and so on. As a car accumulates more miles on the engine and moves into the next band then it will lose roughly 20% of its current value. This means that a brand new car worth £20,000 would depreciate to a value of around £16,000 once it encroaches the 20k mile mark.

You need to remember that these rough estimates are based on mileage depreciation alone. There are other factors that can occur during the time that it takes a car to move from band to band such as age, plate changes and cosmetic damage. Therefore, you’ll need to factor in these too to get a more accurate final figure.

To get a market valuation for a car you are looking to sell or a car you are interested in buying then head to our value my car section.