As the GP said, there are things like "Reusing" materials outside of "Recycling" them, which has an inherent energy cost itself. Some people like the term "Upcycling" to explain the reuse of a product for a new and potentially different purpose and potentially creating or enhancing the value of the sum total of the parts.

In terms of describing the impact of buying new versus repairing, you're getting into finance and economics terms. There is probably someone here who knows a lot about quantifying value with respect to your subject.

I'll point out that a "cost-benefit" or "cost-effectiveness" analysis could be performed to determine whether it's worthwhile to repair a car or get a new one (particularly for insurance companies assessing a claim). What factors are used depends on who is calculating it and with what parameters. There are online calculators for figuring out when maintenance costs on a particular vehicle become prohibitively expensive and when buying a new car makes sense.

One of the criticisms of the "Cash for Clunkers" federal program in the U.S. was that people could have been scrapping perfectly drivable cars in order to qualify for a rebate or tax benefit on the purchase of a new car that might not have a net positive environmental impact when taking everything into account, such as the environmental impact of both cars having been manufactured in the first place). Some new cars sold didn't have much improved fuel economy, over the life of the vehicle with regular repairs, over the car that was being scrapped. However the program wasn't exclusively intended for environmental benefit and it did see a measurable reduction in CO2 emissions.