Quote:
Originally Posted by preciousjeni
I kinda did a double-take at that number. How is death around 150K miles natural? I expect cars to last at least 250,000 miles on the original engine. I will say that I have personally witnessed a Ford pick-up with over 300,000 miles. That impressed me. Of course, the engine had been completely overhauled.
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I said 150K because that's the lowest mileage at which I've had a car die. When I first started driving, nobody expected cars to last that long and the odometers didn't even have the 100,000 place marker so when you 100,000 it rolled over to 0. That was kind of cool
Anyway, I'm on my 7th and 8th cars right now. My '75 Buick Apollo, '76 Buick Regal, '76 Caprice, '91 Pontiac Transport and 2004 Aveo were all purchased used so the maintenance history was unknown. The Transport had been in an accident. If *anybody* made a car like my Buick Regal again, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. That thing was indestructible. I actually sold that one when I graduated from college because I wanted a new car. In fact, I had forgotten about a couple of these cars when I posted. A few of them were sold and were still running fine then. I bought an '87 Chevy Cavalier and ran it into the ground without hardly ever changing the oil. Then I had the Transport which we actually got rid of because back then, mini-vans only had a door on one side and it was a pain to get *two* car seats in and out of it. My second Cavalier was a '99. It was a great car until after the ice and viaduct incident of '02 when it was $200 from being totalled (no injury to me thanks to the airbags)It was never quite right after the accident. I think the frame was bent but they didn't want to say that. The rack of the rack and pinion was replaced twice after that and needed to be replaced again because the power steering was messed up when the engine died at 180K. Again, I did not change the oil as I should.
The used 2004 Chevy Aveo was an emergency purchase when the Cavalier died. I will admit, this one is what I consider a "disposable" car. It's cheap ($11K brand new) and you can tell. I got regular oil changes but didn't read the maintenance schedule to know that the timing belt needed to be replaced at 60K miles. So, at 70K, it slipped causing major engine damage. I'm having it repaired and it will be my daughter's car now that I've purchased the Vue. The irony? This cheap car that had the engine damage far too early is actually a Daewoo sold under the Chevy name. There is something to "You get what you pay for". If you buy an $11K car, you get a cheap car.
Everybody has a different idea of when a car has died a natural death. If I have to pay more than the blue book value to cover a repair, I consider it a dead car. Once a car has over 200K, by my definition, buying new tires for it would probably put it over the edge into the "dead" category.