Considering the fact that America’s infrastructure was basically built with cars in mind, it’s not surprising that car ownership here is less expensive than it is in most countries — but we’re actually not topping charts when it comes to being the cheapest country to own a car. Those accolades go to Australia.
These figures come from Scrap Car Comparison, a UK website dedicated to selling or scrapping damaged cars. The company says that it used the same car models across the board for its comparison (a Toyota Corolla and a Volkswagen Golf) before then factoring in the average cost of car insurance, repairs, and fuel prices in each country to determine the cost of ownership. Scrap Car Comparisons then compared those costs to the average yearly salary of the country in question to see how much of one’s yearly pay it would take to own and operate a vehicle.
I was actually pretty shocked by the disparity. Australia clocks in as the cheapest country to own a car; it takes 49.48 per cent of a person’s average yearly salary to own and operate a vehicle. It’s the only country under the 50 per cent marker. The United States is the second cheapest country to own a car, but it costs 54.87 per cent of the average yearly salary to do so.
Here’s a breakdown of the 10 cheapest countries:
- Australia; 49.48 per cent
- United States; 54.87 per cent
- Denmark; 60.34 per cent
- Canada; 64.40 per cent
- Sweden; 75.84 per cent
- Germany; 78.44 per cent
- Netherlands; 85.65 per cent
- France; 87.00 per cent
- United Kingdom; 89.36 per cent
- Finland; 91.58 per cent
Of course, we’re talking about averages here, so if you’re sitting in New York City facing hefty gas prices and expensive parking, you’re probably well exceeding the country average.
But when you turn your attention to other parts of the world, where salaries are lower and both cars and maintenance can be more difficult to source, you’ll have some seriously massive car ownership costs. I’ll let you click through to the article to see how those numbers play out, but I will tell you that Turkey is the most expensive country in which to own a car. It costs a whopping 652.29 per cent of the average salary to drive.