# Equation for Comparing Autos [closed]

I am buying a used vehicle. I want an equation that will allow me to compare two vehicle's value that are identical in every way except price and mileage. For example:

Car A: $20395 cost and 83400 miles Car B:$17090 cost and 10500 miles

Car C: $24000 cost and 39000 miles Miles: lower miles = good Cost: higher cost = bad What is a ratio/equation that can produce a number to compare these two variables across vehicles? ## closed as off-topic by Xander Henderson, Vinyl_cape_jawa, YiFan, Morgan Rodgers, Parcly TaxelMar 17 at 2:17 This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason: • "This question is missing context or other details: Please provide additional context, which ideally explains why the question is relevant to you and our community. Some forms of context include: background and motivation, relevant definitions, source, possible strategies, your current progress, why the question is interesting or important, etc." – Xander Henderson, Vinyl_cape_jawa, YiFan, Morgan Rodgers, Parcly Taxel If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question. • You don't need an equation. The cheapest car is the car with fewest miles. What's the problem? – Dog_69 Mar 16 at 17:40 • You may think of something like:$c + k \times m$, where$c$is the cost of the car,$m$is the number of miles it travelled so far and$k$is how much you expect to spend on maintenance of your car due to the$m$miles it already travelled. – Ertxiem Mar 16 at 18:19 • Dog_69 That's not always true. So which is the best value per mile car out of these: Car A$16000 at 83379 mi; Car B $24500 at 38341 mi; Car C$19400 at 76,707 miles? – Frank Mar 16 at 18:57
• Ertxiem, I don't want to factor maintenance cost. I just want to compare across these two variables. – Frank Mar 16 at 18:59

Decide on a number of miles that represents a wore-out car and call that number as w.

Then

(miles / w) * price = index value .

But large differences in price become relatively insignificant at small mileages.

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