× METHODOLOGY

We wanted to understand just how the cost of buying and running a car for one year changes across the world; looking at six classes of cars: city cars, small cars, large family cars, SUVs, luxury cars and sports cars.

The car models (and equivalents) which we looked at were Fiat 500 (City Car), VW Golf (Small Car), VW Passat (Large Family Car), SUV (VW Tiguan), BMW 5 Series (Luxury Car) and Porsche 911 (Sports Car).

We captured the cost of buying, from new (with RRP list price collected from the regional website of each manufacturer or, where necessary, a local showroom), a comparable car across each class in 24 different countries around the world. Alongside this, we obtained quotes for insurance in each of the markets using regional insurers and comparison platforms (based upon a quote for a 40 year old male, married with no children, living in the capital city of each country, having the maximum no claims bonus and driving 10,000 miles per year), the price per litre of petrol (as of June 2018 from GlobalPetrolPrices.com), road tax costs and local breakdown cover for each. This allowed us to calculate the total cost of buying and purchasing a brand new car and running it for the first year.

The petrol cost was based upon the manufacturer-stated MPG of each vehicle at 10,000 miles per year.

The average annual earnings in each country was pulled down using Numbeo's 'Cost of Living Index' to allow us to establish the running costs as a % of annual salary.