- Thomas

A long-haul vehicle, driven strictly on the highway, can and will last FAR longer than one driven locally,and stop and go. It all has to do with the stresses placed on the car. My wife worked at a Hendrick ( racing fame ) Honda dealership for a few months in Woodbridge, VA, USA, and they have an over- 1,000,000 mile Honda Accord?, maybe a 1991 model, guy worked for a mapping agency, he practically lived in the car. Drove it pretty much non-stop, and no major repairs, he did have to replace the original odometer after 700,000 miles when it broke. He traded it back to Honda after 10 years. So he basically drove it 100,000 miles a year. They still have that car, on display. It’s stop and go that wears down a car, not the driving.

I remember ads on TV years ago, touting a million-mile Mercedes. A local Classic Chevy club member has a 1955 Chevy, ALL ORIGINAL, with over 250,000 miles on it, he drives to Washington state and back with it. Rusty, not visually well-kept, but mechanically,he takes loving care of it. Pretty amazing.
- The Gremlin Guy –

I prefer option #2 – buy used, and spend the bucks to fix it, then drive it til it drops. #1 is a waste, you should buy a “new” car only if it’s low mileage, and 3-4 years old, when the value has dropped appreciably, but you can still get long use out of it. Let someone ELSE foot the bill for the high initial cost. Unless you’re a low mileage driver, and intend to keep the car for many, many years, then only is Option #1 worth considering, in my book. I’m too broke to buy new usually. Not wasting money on new cars.

This is what it says about the average lifespan of today’s cars:
“The U.S. Department of Transportation reports the average life span of a vehicle is 12 years, or about 128,500 miles. But that could be low simply because people don’t maintain them, Ibbotson says. “If you bought a car today, there shouldn’t be any problem with that car going 200,000 miles,” he says.”

The two longest driven cars that they talk about in the article are a 1989 Saab 900 SPG that had over a million miles on the original engine that was recently put in a museum and the world record holder who drove his 1966 Volvo P1800 over 2.5 million miles.

As long as you perform proper maintenance on a car, they really do seem to last forever in my experience. I’ve never owned a car that didn’t get at least 250,000 miles before I decided to upgrade mainly for the latest safety features. My current car is the first one that I’ve ever owned that has airbags. All of my other cars were all still running about as good as the day that I bought them.

Most folks seem to go with #1. #2 is only an attractive option if you can do your own repairs, thus saving over 1/2 the real repair costs.

I always go with #2.
! have a:
Dodge Caravan @ 930,000 miles (due to retire)
Purchase price $180, 4 years ago.
Subaru Loyale @ 325,000 miles
Purchase price $60, 2 years ago
Subaru Legacy Turbo @ 310,000 miles
Purchase price $410, 3 years ago

On average it seems to cost me $1200. to bring junk back to “standard”, and operating such high mileage cars can’t be done if you are paying for repairs.