Few people predicted the pandemic and how, via supply chain shortages, global vehicle production would crater. The only thing predictable about the car market, really, is how it always ends up harming poor people. There’s a new report out on aging cars and it’s good news for mechanics but bad news for people who need a car to work.
Plus, we check out the inevitable Tesla lawsuit, the unionization of robotaxi firms, and the sudden increase in battery capacity in the United States.
A Double Whammy For Poor Car Owners
It’s now a matter of conventional wisdom that automakers shifted their production to more expensive models during the pandemic, causing prices to go up. At the same time, limited inventory meant that deals for new cars were hard to come by for budget conscious buyers. Even with lower interest rates, this meant that many buyers with limited incomes or poor credit were forced to either stay out of the market or take on longer loan payments (the average new vehicle loan for someone with a 500-600 credit score is about 74 months).
And what about used cars? Used car prices also increased dramatically during the pandemic (about 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels). Unsurprisingly, this means that the average age of a car on the road has reached about 12.5 years, an all-time record. As mentioned yesterday, it’s now a better time to buy a new car and deals are finally out there, though higher interest rates are going to still make it difficult for some to buy anything, new or used.
There’s a nice report out from S&P Global Mobility that addresses how this presents a big upside for mechanics:
Two years of short supply of new vehicles has driven consumers into the used-car market. Now, there could be a counterintuitive shift: Surging new-vehicle supply could further boost expansion of the used-vehicle fleet, bringing more high-mileage vehicles into service bays.
How is this possible? The aging car parc has already expanded the repair business sweet spot, which we consider as vehicles from six to 11 years old. Now 12- and 13-year-old vehicles are becoming a bigger part of the business – even though they were originally sold during the slow-sales years of the Great Recession.
None of this is surprising to anyone paying even limited attention. It’s also not surprising that cars that are over a decade old are now new enough that they’re likely to contain more sensors and be more expensive to fix than older vehicles.
Working class people taking it on the chin is sort of a tradition. Here’s where it gets super fun, though, as pointed out by S&P Global Mobility:
In addition, drivers of older, lower-priced, out-of-warranty vehicles are likely to drive more miles, because they may have jobs without a work-from-home option. During the pandemic years, vehicles from six to 13 years old – the new aftermarket sweet spot – will increase their share of annual miles traveled, outstripping both vehicles zero to 5-years-old and 14-years-plus, according to S&P Global Mobility projections.
The bolding is mine and it’s another obvious, but extremely important point. If you’re a working class person with a job that cannot be done from home you have to keep putting miles on your car. A Pew Research study from early in the pandemic found that 76% of lower income people couldn’t do their work from home, as opposed to just 44% of upper income individuals.
I think it’s plausible that, barring some huge economic upheaval, carmakers will start producing more affordable models and those will eventually become available as used cars, but that’s not going to be for some time. Until then, lower income individuals will have to contend with putting more and more miles on vehicles that are increasingly complex and expensive to fix.
Cruise Probably Becomes The First Firm To Unionize
I’m going to do this backwards and start with a sentence that made me laugh this morning, courtesy of this Reuters report on GM’s self-driving firm Cruise:
Reuters could not definitively determine if these are the driverless car industry’s first union agreements.
Obviously, it’s not the driverless cars themselves that are being unionized but the staff being used to maintain them, though that leads to the other funny note in this piece, calling the agreement:
…[A] significant milestone as unions and robotaxi firms have historically been at odds.
LOL. I mean, yes, of course. Automated systems present a real threat to organized labor and, in the absence of some sort of Universal Basic Income-type system, it’s not clear what happens if we automate everything. The deal is with the IBEW and SEIU and will cover “dozens” of workers.
Tesla Hit With A Class Action Lawsuit Over Range
Like clockwork, the exclusive report from Reuters that Tesla created an entire department to basically ignore people who complained about the potentially overly optimistic range estimates of their cars has resulted in class action lawsuit in California. Since Reuters broke the news, let’s let Reuters chime in here as well:
The lawsuit alleges Tesla breached vehicle warranties and engaged in fraud and unfair competition.
“Put simply, Tesla has a duty to deliver a product that performs as advertised,” Adam A. Edwards, an attorney at Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the firm representing Tesla owners in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The lawsuit’s three plaintiffs cite occasions when their Teslas didn’t achieve close to their advertised ranges and said they had complained to the company without success.
It’ll be interesting to see how much momentum this gains. Many of the earliest Tesla adopters were die hards who have a serious attachment to the firm, but now Tesla is just a car company that makes a lot of fairly affordable EVs.
How Much Battery Capacity Do We Actually Need?
As far as successful legislation goes, the constant news about automakers and suppliers rushing to build battery plants in North America indicates to me that the Inflation Reduction Act has been a success. The big question, though, is how much capacity do we really need?
I ask this because there are two big pieces of news again this week. First, from Automotive News is the fact that LG Energy Solutions says the Korean company wants to build more than 300 gigawatt-hours of production capacity by 2025. That’s a lot. From the story:
LG Energy Solution has the most gigawatt-hour capacity among EV battery plants in North America that have been announced, are under construction or are operational, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm. Three hundred gigawatt-hours would be enough to supply batteries for 3 million to 6 million EVs, depending on their size and configuration, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
For comparison, in 2022 about 750,000 new EVs were registered.
We’re also learning this week that a joint venture between Stellantis and Mercedes called Automotive Cells Co. (it worked so well last time!) is considering building a battery plant in Canada. Here’s some detail The Detroit News:
Mark Stewart, Stellantis’ chief operating officer in North America, said in October that Stellantis could need as many as four battery plants in North America by 2030 to achieve its goal of having at least half of its U.S. passenger car and light-duty pickup sales be all-electric. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares previously suggested ACC could expand to North America.
The train has left the station and, while some automakers like Ford are starting to consider more hybrids in the mix, it seems like most automakers are trying to shift to EVs as fast as possible.
The Big Question
How is is your daily driver? How long do you expect to keep it? How many miles does it have on it?
Photos: Tesla, Skoda, Ford, Cruise
I’ve got three vehicles currently:
2012 Ford F-150 5.0 Coyote XLT Longbed Supercab 4×4 “Heavy Half”, Sterling Gray Metallic/Pewter Cloth: The truck is just a couple hundred miles shy of a quarter million. I bought it two years ago last week with 145k miles, put a grampa high hump topper on it and used it for my freight expediting business. It’s been one of the best vehicles I’ve ever owned, it’s only stranded me twice in 100k miles of driving. I will finish paying it off next year and keep it. It’s a big ass vehicle but surprisingly handy for hauling stuff, and shockingly it gets 17-19.5 mpg pretty consistently, which is astounding considering that it weighs 6400 lbs. It does have the typical rocker/cab corner rust issues which will need attention soon, but I expect that this truck will serve me well for another 3-5 years. I financed it for $15k including TT&L with a 7.2% APR loan, put a 3k down payment on it so paying $305 a month altogether, and I’ve only got about $4800 left to pay on it. Hoping to pay that off the end of this year, a full 8 months early.
2012 VW Jetta Sportwagen 2.5 S 5 Speed, Tornado Red/Black Cloth(Now with GTI Plaid Seats): Currently has 202,000 miles. Bought it with 169k miles last August for $3,500 cash. It was pretty rusty, I ended up getting VOA to completely repair the body under their corrosion warranty. Stupidly, they refused to fix the rusty rear subframe while they were at it, and the suspension and brakes are now worn out, so the car is being only driven around town while I save to put the rust free GTI subframe and suspension bits I picked from a wrecked 2013 GTI into it and replace the rusted out exhaust system. It is shockingly efficient on fuel, averages low 30’s combined, I’ve gotten as high as 36 on the highway with my cruise set at 65. Even with a worn out suspension it’s still fun to drive, and the cargo capacity is impressive. It’s going to be my DD again once I fix everything.
2008 Ford Escape XLS 2.3 FWD, Tungsten Gray Metallic with Mocha Cloth: I bought this little fella for $3k cash OTD from a small dealership because it got hailed on badly down in Texas back in May of this year. 92k miles, clean title, retailed for $7k before the hailstorm. Mechanically solid. I bought it for my storm chasing vehicle and backup vehicle. I’ve been having to replace the front suspension piecemeal, and the rear drums need to be cleaned and adjusted as they are getting a bit squeaky. It’s only got 100k miles on it and the insurance is pretty cheap. I wish it was a year newer and had the 6 speed auto and 2.5 with 4WD, the 2.3 is pretty pokey, but it gets 25-27 mpg highway depending how you drive it, and I put Goodyear Wrangler ST’s on it so it does well in all except for the stickiest mud situations, but I know its limitations and won’t push it. It’s probably my least favorite vehicle but its served its purpose fine.
I do sometimes get annoyed with chasing repairs on my vehicles, but then I think about the money I’d be spending on a truck three model years newer than mine with 100k less miles, and a three model year newer wagon/crossover with sub 100k miles, and more importantly how much more the insurance would be on said newer lower miled vehicles, with current interest rates… I’m just gonna fix them up as needed, and will keep running them until one of them gets totaled, or after I’ve executed my plans to buy a house somewhere here in the KC Metro after I’ve been settled in my new career for a year or so… I don’t anticipate changing my fleet up until a couple years down the line, when there will almost certainly be a glut of new vehicles and prices will finally come back down to earth.
Sure I’d like to have newer vehicles with lower miles and less maintenance, but when you’re making $45k a year and you’re a single dude with student loans and a moderate amount of credit card debt to deal with, you learn to live within your means.
“The only thing predictable about the car market, really, is how it always ends up harming poor people. There’s a new report out on aging cars and it’s good news for mechanics but bad news for people who need a car to work.”
T’was ever thus:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take cars, for example. He earned 2,700 dollars a month before taxes. A really good new Toyota Camry cost 32,265 dollars. But an affordable car which were sort of OK for three or four years and then ran like hell, cost about 13,000 dollars. Those were the kind of cars Vimes always bought, and drove until they ran so badly that he could tell you the cost of a tow anywhere in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night from bitter experience.
But the thing was that new Camry lasted for years and years. A man who could afford one had a car that’d still be running great in 15 years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap beaters would have spent 40,000 dollars on cars and repairs in the same time and would still be driving a beater.
Perfect.
I do love an Autopian-ized Terry Pratchett’s ‘Boots’ allegory. And it’s not wrong. I’ve lived that experience. I wager that I’ve spent $150k on vehicles in the last decade including repairs adding up to probably 50k on nearly a dozen different vehicles. Granted, my line of work and my storm chasing hobby is harder on vehicles that most people, but even so, if I could have afforded a new vehicle with low miles, and only had three vehicles in that timeframe, I would have saved myself that 50k in maintenance, which included a few engine replacements, timing chain/belt replacements and complete suspension replacements.
The math does math.
Came here for the Boots allegory reference, left satisfied.
My DD is a 2007 Toyota Corolla with 161K miles on it. I got it cheap, and the minute I have the loot to do so, I’ll drop it like a venomous snake.
BTW, the replacement would also be used, because the Corolla’s one advantage for me is that it’s a car, not a “Crossover” or “SUV.” Since no one makes cars that push my buttons these days, I’m stuck with trolling the ads and, if I ever find the one that racks me, paying too much. It looks more and more as if I’m talking BaT money, which is absurd.
My daily is a 2020 Voyager with 67k on it. I bought it used 4-5 months ago with 59k on it. I took a 4 year loan on it, but set up the payments to pay it off in 3. I never buy extended warranties, but in this case I decided to purchase a 4 year 48k bumper to bumper warranty on it through the dealer. If the van is solid and doesn’t betray my trust, I will drive it till it dies. If it reveals itself to be a troublesome piece of shit, I will replace it before the warranty is up. If the market ever normalizes and hybrid vans become more common and reasonable, I would consider replacing it with something like a Sienna, but only if the 2nd row is removable/stowable.
My wife drives a 2018 Forester that we got for a steal of a deal and 0% financing in the before times. It still only has 40k on it. Similar situation with the Forester, there’s a warranty on the shitty Subaru CVT that already failed once at 20k miles. If this replacement transmission makes it to 100k (the warranty the Subaru extended for their crappy CVT), we will keep it till it dies. If the CVT fails again before warranty, we’ll be looking around.
In general, we intend to keep both “forever”, unless things go sideways.
My daily is a 2000 Jeep Wrangler on 35 inch tires with 159k miles on it. It’s been my daily since 05. I’ll drive that Jeep until I can no longer fix it.
My wife has a 2017 Subaru Forester XT with 50k on it. We plan to keep that as long as we can. Plan is to hand it down to me and get an EV kid carrier if we ever need to.
I’m still daily driving a 1989 Firebird and it’s a pretty tenuous situation… It’s got 110K miles on the original (well kept) 305 V8, but it needs valve seals and it’s wearing down to the point it’s burning some oil. Also, my insurance company won’t put normal insurance on it, so it’s on a Hagerty policy. So, while I don’t have a car payment and I can handle a lot of repairs myself, I’m not sure how much life is left in the engine and even though I’m not struggling, a car payment will be tough to swallow when I finally have to let reality sink in. I would love to keep daily driving it forever, but reality may not be so simple.
I daily a 2014 GMC Sierra with 244000 miles.
2020 Kia Niro Touring, 72k miles. It’s not my favorite but it’s currently the best tool for the job. Nearly 50 mpg in a small wagon is great when you drive 25k miles a year. The Kia-ness is the downside. The seats are terribly uncomfortable on long trips and my Android auto has barely worked long enough over the years for a full album of music. The biggest gripe is the mpg in the winter. No heat pump means the engine stays on longer to make heat, and it’s not very good at heating the car either. I have the extended warranty to 120k miles, but I don’t really plan on keeping it that long.
No idea what I’ll get to replace it. I want something more fun but the nice gas mileage is not something I really want to give up
Daily is 2013 4Runner, 158k miles. As long as I can keep the frame from rotting out, it’s barely broken in. I should be able to double this mileage with few problems. I’m not a Yota fanboy, but facts are facts. I bought it 4 years ago at 80K, and I’ve done nothing other than wear items and fluid changes.
Beater is a 2007 Volvo XC70 wagon. 233K miles, it has a few little issues but for the most part runs great and gets a little better mileage than the 4R. I typically use this as an around town beater for places where I’d have to street park the 4R, and having a 2nd car is very handy. Last week I I went to leave for work at 6am and had a flat on the 4R. I just jumped in the Volvo and dealt with it after work.
Honestly If I was smart, I’d sell the 4R for nearly 20k and put another 50K on the Volvo.
Car pricing DOES suck, but with the way the housing market is, I have little bandwidth left for worrying about car prices. There are still plenty of decent 5K beaters on Marketplace (sorry, nobody “needs” a new car), but good luck trying to purchase a home, especially if it’s your first and you have no equity to roll over.
My daily is a 2012 JKU. I’ve done a laundry list of prophylactic repairs, preventative maintenance, improvements where possible, and generally just maintain it very well. It’s got about 91,800 on it and I plan on driving it for the foreseeable future (years) after having it for 2 years already. Private party car values are low enough, or financing is out of reach enough for most, that it’s hard to sell, even if I wanted to. And if I wanted, stupidly, to replace it, I’d have to contend with an interest rate 3 or 4 times what I currently have, which is worsened by the fact it’s almost paid.
My wife has a 2015 Nissan Quest which has been well cared for, on or ahead of time. The CVT fluid has been changed every 20,000 miles in addition to that. The ridiculous part is even at 65,000 miles, it’s worth maybe 40% of what it cost new. It’s worth far, far more as a vehicle we can use. The wife says we will drive it into the ground and, even if the CVT fails, we’ll replace it and drive it some more. She’s never been more serious than when she’s said that.
I alternate between my wifes RAV4 hybrid and my RAM 1500 depending on her schedule. She doesn’t go out much now that we have a newborn so I drive her car as much as possible to save on fuel.
I got 2 vehicles in the family and another soon.
1) ’16 Honda Accord sedan V6. During the school year this is my wife’s daily driver. It has about 65K miles. We are going to keep this and pass on to my daughter for her high school car and maybe beyond depending on where she goes to college. It has at least another 6 years ahead of it in the family. Heck, I may even take it back and continue driving it if it doesn’t become my son’s car when is in HS in a couple years.
2) ’17 Honda Pilot with 38K miles. I WFH most days, but this will be what I’m driving most of the time M-F on short trips around town. Again, this will be passed down to one of my kids and will likely still be good enough to send them to college in since it is low mileage now.
3) ’17 Honda Ridgeline with 14K miles. This is my father’s and since he doesn’t drive any more, I’ll probably buy it off him in the Spring. This will probably be my next dd and is a candidate to go to college with one of my kids.
My daughter wants something like a Lexus CUV. I want a Lexus LS Hybrid, but that ain’t happening either.
Honda is the best! (2014 Accord here)
2023 Mazda 3 HB GT AWD Turbo. Picked it up in November of 2022. It will hit 30,000km sometime this weekend. We use it for almost everything now. Wife has a 2015 Pathfinder with 250,000km. She is a teacher, so it doesn’t get used much during the summer. I take it once every couple of weeks to tow the trailer to get landscaping supplies.
My daily drivers are two bicycles:
1) Custom built “bicycle”(that is what it legally is, currently), an electric trike with about 75,000 miles on it since construction in 2016. Used to be a velomobile with a custom body shell, but that body was removed after an accident last year and subsequent upgrades were made. A new body based upon the Milan SL velomobile in my possession is under construction. Has hydraulic disc brakes up front and a cable-pull brake in the rear with the motor in the rear allowing regen, gas shock suspension on all 3 wheels, 16″ DOT rims with Mitas MC2 tires, 21 speed gearing with 26/38/53T up front and 11-32T rear, and without the body on it weighs in at 75 lbs at the moment. This vehicle has a Leafbike 3T 1500W PMDC motor, ASI BAC4000 controller, and a custom 1.5 kWh battery pack, making 13 horsepower peak. It’s faster to take off than most cars, 0-30 mph somewhere around 2-3 seconds as the rear tire claws for traction, but my battery pack is only 48V at the moment, limiting my top speed to 50 mph. I plan to later upgrade to a PowerVelocity controller and 108V battery, which will increase top speed into triple digits and might allow 0-60 mph in under 8 seconds. It is pedalable to 25 mph on flat ground in a sprint with the body removed and motor disabled, and it’s easy to maintain 12-13 mph, in spite of the weight and in spite of the motor’s cogging losses. Efficiency without the body is such that it only gets about 40 miles range on a 1.5 kWh battery at 30-35 mph using the motor. When it had the previous body, top speed pedaling in a sprint with a disabled motor was 35 mph, holding 22 mph on flat ground was easy, and using the motor it could do 150-200 miles range on a 1.5 kWh battery at 30-35 mph. The previous body had a CdA of 0.20 m^2, while without the body that drag is probably close to five-fold increased. This is an excellent illustration of how big of a difference aerodynamics makes regarding efficiency and thus range on a given battery size.
2) Milan SL velomobile, about 12,000 miles. Unmotorized. McPhereson struts up front, gas shock in the rear, and Sturmey Archer 90mm drum brakes, 27 speed gearing with 24/38/53T up front and 11-32T in the rear, 20″ front wheels with 20x32mm Continental Contact Urban tires and 26″ rear wheel with Schwalbe Marathon Plus 26×1.5” tire, and weighs 70 lbs. I can pedal it to 50 mph on flat ground in a sprint with about 1.5 miles of flat road, and is easy to maintain 30 mph on the flat. Will be getting upgraded to an EV conversion with a Leafbike motor, Phaserunner controller, capped at about 4 peak horsepower(the rear swingarm can’t handle much torque), and set up to top 80 mph.
I also have my car, a Triumph GT6+, converted to electric. Prestolite MTC4001 series wound DC motor, a 208V 100AH CALB CA100FI battery pack, Soliton 1 controller, and BRUSA NLG charger. Retains the manual transmission. It is a work in progress. It’s the fastest vehicle in my fleet, and is sort of terrifying to drive, just the way I like it.
Daily is a company car, 2019 WRX. My commute is pretty short so it has about 50,000 km (30k miles) on it. Will keep it for quite a while because we don’t do the 3 year leases, cars tend to stick around until they get rough.
I still keep my 2004 TJ from before I got the WRX but I don’t put over 2000 km per year on it. I will keep that forever unless something tragic happens to it.
In 2008, we bought an 09 Hybrid Camry as our 1st kid was on the way. Fifteen years later, it’s my daily driver. It was my wife’s DD for many years, but now she works from home, and I don’t. There’s no reason to rack up miles on our ’18 4Runner, which is far more expensive to operate in gas and tires. The Camry’s hybrid battery is showing signs of needing to be replaced, which I plan/hope to do myself, and by this time next year my daughter should be driving the car we bought before she was born.
Daily: 2005 Frontier XE 4-cyl, manual, 196k miles. I drive it very little, maybe 2-3k miles a year.
I ride my Supercub whenever I can, weather permitting.
I’d keep it “forever” but here in Northern New England, rust is a huge issue and I could barely get it through state inspection this year.
Frame is fine, cab is fine, bed is halfway gone. State wants rusty cars off the road.
If I can’t get it pass inspection anymore I’ll buy another one from somewhere south with no rust.
Luckily for me, Nissan has made these for 16 years up until 2021 so there’s plenty of minty fresh examples left.
Wife drives a 2020 Armada, 65k miles. We’ll keep it until rust and repairs become a problem or we win the lottery and I can buy a LC200.
It’s not like the bed is a structural crumple zone. If they want to get rusty vehicles off the road, they can help the owners buy an outrageously overpriced replacement. Ridiculous.
Daily driver is a 2003 Honda Civic with 181,000+ miles on it, making plans to fix up a few more things before winter so I can get at least another two years out of it.
Currently my daily-driver rotation consists of a 1967 SAAB 96, a 1970 International 1200D, and a 1976 Volvo 66 GL. I drove the 96 yesterday and today, so I’ll go with that. I’ve owned it for about twenty years and have no interest in getting rid of it, so I expect to keep it for a while. The odometer reads a bit over 28,000 miles but (a) it’s only got five digits and (b) it may very well not be the original speedometer head, so who knows? My best guess is that the car has well over 100,000 miles on it, even though it spent several years just sitting in the woods before the president of the NW SAAB Owners Club found it, dragged it home, came to his senses, and passed it along to
someone with even poorer judgmentme.Saab 96 is a very aerodynamically slippery car for its time period, and considering frontal area into the equation, is about as slippery as the best offerings on the market today. Plus there was one in “A Serbian Film”.
Will roll over 40k on my 2018 GTI next month. First year was pretty normal mileage at 10k, then 2nd year I got a job close to home so at least 3x/week I didn’t use it for commuting, then pandemic and a job change meant more WFH and more flexibility in general. Pace of mileage is increasing more from trips, both work and personal – but may only put me back at a 10k/year pace.
No plans to replace it for the foreseeable future, that feeling may change after the factory warranty is up next April, but really shouldn’t make any automotive changes until I decide if I want to move to a new place next year.
Daily is a 2018 Model 3 with about 54k miles. That said, neither my wife nor I have a commute anymore and it’s one of 3 vehicles we own of a similar age and mileage, so in theory we could probably keep it forever. That was largely my plan until my wife saw a Rivian R1S in the flesh the other day, and decided she NEEDED it. So, when our number gets called I’ll likely get rid of the Tesla and her QX60 and replace it with that.
I finally saw an R1S in the flesh and it’s freaking cool. I see a couple of the trucks in town but for some reason the SUV is more appealing to me.
The R1T looks nice & is supposed to be good offroad. The concern is how the bed is designed as part of the full body. I’ve heard of several reports of people having even small rear fender benders costing +$20k to fix, which has to eventually lead to excessive insurance rates. Hopefully they redesign the bed sooner than later to be more forgiving in small rear end accident repairs
Daily is a 2021 Ram 1500 with 22,000 miles. I plan to keep it at least 10 years. I work from home 3 days a week and have an under 10 mile commute. The wife has a 1 mile commute each way. We don’t put many miles on our cars at all (probably under 9,000 per car). I used to buy 3 year old cars coming off of a lease, but the pandemic made that not make any sense when I bought my truck, because I would have saved about $2000 vs. buying new. It’s mostly used for towing our camper on vacation and it rarely gets driven more than 2-3 times a week, especially in the summer, because I commute in the MGB if the weather allows.
The oldest “normal” car in our fleet is a 2008 STS with about 125,000 miles that is used by a kid to get to college and work. I’ll keep it going until it has a repair that doesn’t make financial sense. It’s been a great car, but the gas mileage is horrendous (worse than my truck!).
How old is your daily driver?
She’ll be 24 in December
How many miles does it have on it?
125,000
How long do you expect to keep it?
As long as it takes.
Barring something terrible happening or something great like finding a killer deal on something else I really really want.
Unfortunately I’m in the “needs” market not the “wants” market.
Fortunately I’m pretty confident I can keep her going strong for many years to come. If not, I’m blessed with a couple backups.
My pickup is 12 years old and I plan on keeping it until it dies because my wife deserves to retire and you can’t get a new extended cab pickup for $350 a month for 60 months purchase with 0 down and 0 trade in.
I split my daily “daily driver” between a 2012 Chevrolet Colorado and a 2006 Jaguar XJ8, depending on the weather and the chores I have in store for the day. Mileage is 265,000 and 114,000 respectively. Everyone knows a GM truck will run until the body falls off, but I might want to upgrade to a Gladiator someday just to scratch the doorless itch finally in my life. I can’t afford to replace the Jag with anything near as nice right now, so I’m just dealing with its sometime dash glitches. Plus I just really, really like it.
I have a bunch of other registered “play” vehicles and I only live two miles from work so theoretically my “dailies” will last forever, luck willing.
Wife has a 2009 Pontiac G6 with about 155,000 on it, but rust is starting to break through on the rockers so it will need to be replaced soon, something I’m not looking forward to AT ALL, especially considering we’ve not had a car payment in about 8 years.