Car Value by Mileage
There is no adjustment table on this page. What a thousand extra miles is worth differs by model, by age, by market and by month, and the tables that get it right are compiled and relicensed constantly. Look the adjustment up for your own car and type it in; this page does the part that is the same for everybody.
The valuation before any mileage adjustment.
Yours to supply: annual mileage differs between countries by a factor of two or more.
Taken from a valuation guide, a dealer, or your own comparison of live listings.
Value once mileage is taken into account
$9,840
18,000 miles above the 60,000 miles expected of a car this age.
How this was worked out
- The reading a car this age would show6 yr × 10,000 miles a year = 60,000 miles
- How far off this one is78,000 − 60,000 = 18,000 miles, which is 18 lots of a thousand
- The rate, per thousand$120.00 flat = -$120.00
- Applied to the guide value$12,000 − $2,160 = $9,840
- The same rate over a year$120.00 × 10,000 ÷ 1,000 = $1,200 a year
Every mile driven above the expected reading is money coming off the eventual sale price. At this rate a full year of average driving is worth $1,200 in value, which belongs in your running costs beside the fuel rather than as a surprise on the day you sell.
Mileage is a proxy, not a cause. Buyers use it because it is printed on the dashboard and cannot easily be argued with, but a well-kept car with a full history and a high reading will often beat a neglected one with a low reading in the same week. Treat the adjustment as the opening position in a negotiation rather than as a fact about the car.
Two shapes of adjustment are offered because guides publish both. A flat amount per thousand is common in fixed-price trade books; a percentage of value is common where a single rule has to cover everything from a city runabout to something with a six-figure list price. Using the wrong shape for your source is the fastest way to a number that is out by a multiple rather than by a little.
The adjustment is applied as a straight line: twice the excess is twice the deduction, all the way out. Real tables flatten off, because the difference between 90,000 and 120,000 is worth far less than the difference between 20,000 and 50,000 — so a reading a very long way from average will be over-corrected here. Nothing is converted between miles and kilometres either: pick one, and make sure the rate you looked up is quoted in the same one.
The adjustment is yours to bring
This page holds no lookup table, and it never will. Published mileage adjustments are compiled per model and per market, revised constantly, and the accurate ones are licensed products rather than free ones. Printing a set of figures here would be a guess wearing the clothing of a reference, and it would rot quietly — the surrounding sum would keep working perfectly while the number underneath it drifted further from reality every month.
What is offered instead is the half of the calculation that genuinely is identical for every vehicle: working out how far an odometer sits from where it would be expected to sit, and applying whatever correction you looked up to whatever valuation you were quoted.
Expected, not average
The comparison is against the reading a car of that age ought to show, which means a figure for a typical year of driving multiplied by the years elapsed. That yearly figure is an input too, because it varies enormously between countries — an ordinary annual distance in one place is close to double the ordinary distance in another, and the same odometer reading can therefore be modest in one market and alarming in the next.
Take a six-year-old car against 10,000 a year and the expected reading is 60,000. Showing 78,000 puts it 18,000 clear, which is eighteen units of a thousand. At a correction of 120 per thousand that is 2,160 off a 12,000 valuation, leaving 9,840. The same eighteen units at 1% of value per thousand happens to land in exactly the same place, which is coincidence rather than a rule.
Two shapes of correction, and using the wrong one
Guides publish adjustments in two forms and this page accepts both. A flat sum per thousand is common in fixed-price trade books, where one deduction is quoted for a specific model. A percentage of the valuation is common wherever a single rule has to stretch across everything from a city runabout to something with a six-figure list price.
Applying the wrong shape is the fastest route to an answer that is out by a multiple rather than by a little. A flat deduction lifted from a guide written around cars worth 30,000 will demolish a car worth 4,000 — which is why this page holds the result at zero rather than printing a negative price, and says so when it happens.
Distance is a running cost nobody invoices
Turn the correction around and it stops being a valuation footnote. If a thousand units of distance is worth 120 off the eventual sale price, then an ordinary year of driving quietly costs 1,200 in value. That belongs in the same list as fuel and insurance, and it is missing from almost every list anybody keeps.
It is also the honest way to compare a long commute with a short one, or to price the question of whether to take your own car on a holiday. The fuel is visible at the pump. The value being driven off the car is not visible until the day somebody makes you an offer, and by then there is nothing to be done about it.
Low readings, older cars and kilometres
Does a low reading always raise what a car is worth?
Not reliably. Very low distance on an older vehicle raises questions about perished seals, tired brake components and long periods standing still, and some buyers discount for it rather than paying extra. The correction assumes a car used lightly but regularly, which is not the same thing as one barely used at all.
Is the correction the same for every age of car?
No, and this is the most common way the arithmetic goes wrong. Deductions per thousand are usually steepest on newer stock and flatten out as a vehicle ages, because there is progressively less value left for any single factor to remove. Take your figure from a source describing roughly the age you are valuing.
Can I work in kilometres instead?
Yes — switch the unit and every label follows. The important thing is that the reading, the yearly figure and the correction all describe the same unit. Mixing a rate quoted per thousand miles with a reading in kilometres produces an answer roughly sixty percent too large, and nothing on the screen will look wrong.
Will a dealer accept this figure?
Treat it as an opening position rather than a verdict. Condition, service history, the number of previous keepers and how quickly that specification is selling locally all move the price, sometimes further than distance does. What the calculation gives you is a defensible starting number and a reason for it.