300 in pocket – 1000 on new car = spent £700 to swap to an unknown car instead of spend £800 to fix a known car.

what I was getting at is that to me the £100 difference is not worth the risk of swapping to an unknown replacement car, that could almost be swallowed immediately on insurance change admin fee, + difference in petrol in the tanks of the two cars etc.

maybe just me, but I would rather fix a car I know than go through the risk and hassle of swapping.

(obviously my opinion only, you don’t have to share it, I was just putting it forward)

My last few cars have done OK
Gold Mk3 sold at 125K, another Golf Mk3 sold at 135K

Currently on the drive
Vectra estate @ 140K and going fine
SAAB 9-5 estate @ 90K aquired last year

Dont think the make is that important to be honest
I look after my cars (servicing & anything need doing gets done)which is key
Anything that gets neglected, used & abused wont!

maybe just me, but I would rather fix a car I know than go through the risk and hassle of swapping.

(obviously my opinion only, you don’t have to share it, I was just putting it forward)

Me again.

Don’t disagree, as in the past I’ve spent probably £500 (+servicing/tyres etc) a year on keeping it in good running order. A £40k car even if I only paid £2k for it still costs serious money to run.

But this time we’ve also moved, from a SE commuter town to a hamlet down a single-track road deep in the country, so bought an £1100 X-Type with AWD instead 😀

Well done to everyone who has got their car past 100,000 miles.

But as pointed many people dont actually drive that far. If they only do 5,000 miles a year they would have to have owned the car for 20 years to reach this level so they might actually be other beings on their way to reach enlightenment like all you super beings.
Sanctimonious, much?
My 51 plate Octy TDi is currently on 111800, it was on 85000 when I bought it in ’05, and it cost £560 to go through the last MOT, but that included a service, two tyres and labour. I don’t plan on getting rid of it anytime soon, it runs beautifully on longer runs, like the trip down to Burnham-on-Sea today, around 150 miles or so, and it’s very comfortable.
If I had to replace it, it would be for another Škoda, either an Octy or Fabia VRs, just for the extra poke and better handling. As it happens I average less than 5k/year, because work is less than a mile away.

“smugness”… “they might actually be other beings on their way to reach enlightenment like all you super beings.”

Lolcopters! You are so right. Guilty as charged 😀

To beat ads678, our 1995 Audi A6 has done 280k miles, albeit only 200k on this engine. Still does 40mpg and doesn’t depreciate, cheap cheap car.

It’ll change over the next few years:

ABS, ESP, DPF, DMF, Airbags, Electronic Differentials, ECUs, cambelts……. + The new MOT = lots of failiures

The manufacturers have lobbied hard for all this, so they can reduce the likely timeframe of a car (rust has been killed by galvanising and mechanicals are great) to keep sales up. The electronics are essential in achieving the EU emissions tests.

I asked my F-I-L who used to work in diesel engines and power train, why would you go for a Cambelts over a chain? He mentioned that “it seemed a good idea at the time but we couldn’t help notice BMW and Merc stayed put. Turns out they got it right”

Petrol engines are making more sense, especially the new crop of small capacity turbos as diesels are going to become more and more fragile and costly.

I’m still running around in my Jan 1992 Peugeot 605 that I’ve owned for over 17 years. I’ll tempt fate by saying that despite the odd gremlin it’s alwys started first time and always got me home, even when I bent a con rod. I came very close to buying a new Citroën recently but felt the odds of it starting after being left for a couple of weeks at altitude in Winter were much lower than the old Pug.

The dealer said that disconnecting the battery to take it into the appartement to warm it up would result in the electronic box needing a reprogramme for 50e. And that if I serviced it myself… . Remember those jokes comparing a Windows PC with a car that ended by saying nobody would put up with a car as quirky as a PC. Well cars are now quirkier than PCs.

It surprises me because every car I have owned, I have kept for more miles than this, or sold on at similar miles in perfectly working state…

But that just reinforces the stats as the average age of your cars when you sold them was 110,000 miles…just 4,000 more than the statistics 🙂 Now obviously someone else bought them but most of them may have been bought as ‘disposable cars’ that will be run for only another year or two and a few more thousand miles until a bill comes in.

The cars that seem to hit stellar miles are ‘1 or 2 careful owners’ examples who’s drivers keep them running for sentimental reasons/just to see how far they can go. As soon as they hit the secondhand market your ‘super reliable tank’ suddenly becomes a big old thirsty barge that ‘doesn’t owe me anything’ so when a big bill starts looming scrappage is likely.

Its not that long ago that the majority of cars only had 5 digits on the odometer – so theres a folk memory that 100k is some sort of threshold for the useful life of a car. After that point a lot of people will be shy about spending money on larger repairs. Whats economically viable as a repair is completely subjective – it either is or isn’t a sum that you feel like spending. Most people see any kind of repair or service bill as a punitive tax, they’re happy to pay higher capital and bigger depreciation in the hope of not having to pay those bills. They’ll see the prospect of paying that bill and then having a car thats no more valuable as a result as reason not to pay the bill

My dads of that mindset – even after 20 years of retirement and averaging 4k a year he’ll replace a car as soon as its out of warrentee for fear of having to stump up for an exhaust or battery.

Personally – I see maintanance and repair as money well spent – I’d rather pay for that than watch money evaporate as depreciation

I run high milage stuff, my vans I typically buy with 250k already on the clock, I’ve got one with 310k and one relative spring chicken at 140k at the moment. But I’m happy to spend more than the resale value of the vans on servicing and repairs…… because they are vans – they earn money.

Not necessarily. I’m looking at upcoming bills for mine (as I mentioned above, not for stuff which a more expensive servicing regime would have put off) expensive enough that I could instead buy something else several years and tens of thousands of miles newer with the money. It really does no longer make economic sense to keep it. If I add in the money I’ve saved by not religiously servicing to the schedule I can knock another year or so and ten or twenty thousand or so miles off what I buy to replace it (in reality I’ll chip in a bit more than that, and live with a bit more depreciation than optimal for the cheapest motoring).

With regard to the age/mileage thing, I’m busy trying to make my mind up on that compromise when buying something new. The head tells me that a 4yo car with 80k miles is better value than a 5yo with 50k, but something still puts me off getting something so close to that psychological 100k mile barrier (even if I’ve gone significantly past that with my current one).