How long do you keep/drive your car(s)?

[gsmittle]

My current ride is a 3/4 ton 94 Suburban with almost 200k miles on it. Still going strong, despite the occasional water pump, A/C compressor, etc.

I tend to keep my vehicles until they are completely worn out, then buy new or slightly used if I can afford it. The 'Burb was an exception. I bought it in 2000 with 50k miles on it.

My only complaint is that it gets 10 mpg....

g.

[JSCOOK]

We keep them until the repair cost exceed the value of the car, or at least for my wife ... most times I get her the newer wheels and take over whatever she was driving and drive it completely into the ground unless the outside body is falling apart and looks like crap ...

I've been working on cars and heavy trucks since I was old enough to hand
my dad tools as a kid ... so keeping them running is pretty cheap for me as long as I have time.

I refuse to buy domestic vehicles anymore as my personal experience is they don't last as long as the imports do ... YMMV

The "newer" vehicle is a 1998 Nissan Quest LE @ 156,000 kms
My car is a 1995 BMW 318i 5-speed with 198,500 kms

[dlminehart]

I picked up a slightly used (10,000 miles) Toyota Corolla the year my first daughter was born. Passed it on to her last year when she entered college, complete with its 240,000 miles.

[LCHIEN]

none of the above.
I have kept mine about 12-13 years, which for me is about 100K, or until it gets to be too much trouble to keep running in a comfortable manner (e.g most all the stuff has to be working, windows, power locks, windows, radio, A/C - this is Houston after all - )

[cwsmith]

I bought my first car in 1965, it was a new VW 1200 "Beatle". I put 93K on that in three years. In 1968 we bought a new Plymoth Valient 200. In 1976 I bought a new Mercury Monarch. I had about 72K on the Valiant and kept it for another two years, giving it to my kid brother with 80K on it. The Merc was a total POS and after only seven years and 67K miles, the body wasn't roadworthy. I walked for about a month, waiting for my new 84 Toyota Tercel wagon to come in. The Tercel lasted for 14 years, and I sold it for around $800, as I recall. That was my last "new" car!

In 1997 we bought a 91' Plymoth Grand Voyager w/84K on it. The same week I also bought a 95' Miata. All together I think I only spent $14K for both.

I just dumped the Voyager this past Tuesday with 140K on it. Actually took it to the local "Pick-A-Part". That same morning I bought a 06' Dodge Grand Caravan with only 26K on it. I hope it serves me as well as the Voyager did. Today, the Miata only has 34K on the odometer. I'll probably pass that on to one of the grandsons in another 15 years or so.

So, all told (including the new Caravan) I've spent a total of $44,756 on purchases. That's a little over $1,000 a year.



CWS

[mpc]

I've owned 3 cars - and still own/drive all 3:
1978 Corolla SR-5 Liftback, primer, got after 1st year in college. 248K miles now.
1987 Chrysler Conquest, was mom's car - she bought it new, I bought it from her a few years ago. 135K miles now.
1988 Mitsu Starion: the only car I've purchased new so far. Something like 73K miles.

The '78 and '87 both serve as daily drivers, the '88 is mostly a weekend toy. The Corolla is just wide enough to swallow sheets of plywood (!) so it's practical too. And being a carb engine with a simple electronic ignition it is very reliable. The Starion & Conquest (same car actually - both built by Mitsu) are more problematic with electronic fuel injection. When they run right, they run great, but they need more attention/repairs than the Corolla and getting parts means junkyard runs or trading with other Starion/Conquest owners. Not much is available from dealers or car parts stores. I do almost all maintenance/work on them myself and I know them inside-and-out.

My folks figured the Corolla would be a college car and would be replaced once I got a real job. Nope, I love that car. Rear wheel drive, stick shift (as are the other 2 cars), and fairly light so it moves out pretty well.

I'm also fairly distrusting of many of the modern car electronics - what replacement parts will be available 10-15-20 years from now? I don't put that many miles on my cars each year so 10+ years of life should be easily expected from a new car - assuming parts stay available that long. Plus, many of the manufacturers are now putting tattle-tales in the engine computers - recording max speed the car sees etc. "Hmm... says here you were doing 81 miles an hour. That's not legal on any road in the US so you must have been racing. And racing voids the warantee." I read (a class-action lawsuit I think) GM is using that argument right now to get out of warantee work on Corvettes - and claiming that such speeds are "abuse" to the vehicle. 80mph is abuse to a Corvette sports car - what kind of sports car are you selling GM - especially when your own ads claim it's a 150MPH sports car?! GM is not the only one doing this either.

For a while, car makers had to standardize on the "OBD II" diagnostics - so small repair shops could buy ONE scan tool and work on cars from any manufacturer. Now there is a new standard - "CANbus" or something like that... so everybody needs another scan tool. So much for standardization. Honda has a special scan tool to reset the "oil needs changing" mileage timer on many of their cars... i.e. the engine computer monitors miles driven and spits out "time to change the oil" lights on the dash. Well, I might not drive enough miles in a year to trigger that light - but I change the oil at least yearly (nice thing about living in dry Southern California - I can get away with long oil change time intervals!) and how would I reset this stupid timer? Or if I'm about to start a 1,100 mile round trip visit to my folks I'd change the oil before leaving so it won't come due half-way into the trip. Again, how to reset the stupid timer? It takes Honda's scanner. Great... how expensive is it - and will they even sell it to me? I'd avoid buying a car for that reason alone - if I have to invest in hundreds or thousands of dollars of special equipment for that brand it's not worth it - I won't save that much working on the car myself over the life of the car. I've looked a couple new cars... and I make the dealer find a factory service manual so I can browse what special equipment is actually needed. And I've told them I won't buy their car if the manual says it needs special/expensive tools/scanners for routine jobs like oil changes.

I love my simple Corolla. Mom figures I'll be buried in it. I guess that qualifies as "until death do us part." And the Starion/Conquest are fairly rare cars and a blast to drive too; it'll be a loonngg time before they're gone.

mpc

[mater]

My wife has been driving her Acura for 14 years. In that time I have had 5 new trucks. I did keep a 72 Ford pickup for 28 years and then sold it for $50.00 less than what I paid for it. Of course when I bought it the cost was $2800.00 and when I sold it a new one like it was around $20,000.00.

[Rand]

I couldn't vote because there wasn't an option for - Until it's stolen.

I bought a new Acura Integra GSR in 95 and decided I would drive it until the wheels fell off. Great car, practical, reliable, good fuel economy and decent performance. It was stolen from in front of my sister's house one night in 2002 while we were over for dinner.

I got the insurance settlement and replaced it with the same year and model. It was stolen from my driveway a week before Christmas 05....

I decided to get a different model of car. Now both cars stay in the garage.

[twistsol]

3 cars lifetime

I'm on my third car since I got my license in 1981.

First was a 1981 Olds Cutlass diesel. I worked as a service tech in college for a computer store and drove it all over Western Washington. It had 272,000 miles on it when the crankshaft broke and I got $50 for it at the junkyard. Those things got a lot of crap, but it was the best car I ever owned.

1989 Ford Tempo. Gave it away to charity with 108,000 miles when the A/C broke. I hated that car a week after I bought it.

I'm now driving a 2000 Dodge Intrepid with about 85,000 miles. If I win the lottery tonight, I might get the power locks fixed. My oldest gets her license in two years and she's laid claim to it on that day. I might just buy her a new car, I'm not a big fan of change.

My wife, on the other hand, gets a new car every three years in May. Currently she has a 2006 GMC Sierra Crew Cab 4x4. She's 4'11" and nobody believes that's what she drives.

[dmtriggs]

We have a family of six. My wife and I drive old cars (me, a 93 Saturn that I paid $600 for in 2004, her a 00 Stratus) as our daily drivers. I commute 20K a year in the Saturn (80 miles round trip to work five times a week) and she drives about 15K a year in her Stratus (school and work). However, hauling around the four kids and gear doesn't work well in either of these. We have an 03 Suburban that gets to stretch its legs very little, to the tune of about 8K miles/year. The goal is for the Suburban to last until the kids are grown up. At the rate we're going, that will be 2018 and it should have about 120K on it at that point. Then we can give up the over-sized car in favor of more economical transportation without maintaining three vehicles. In the mean time, if the Saturn fails, I'll find another $600 car to wring the last few good miles out of.

[Thom2]

I'm 37 years old and been driving for approximately 20 years:

1. 68 Dart - $100, ??? miles - dragged outta the weeds, never did run right
2. 74 Duster - $400, 120k miles - little old lady car, one of the best that I owned
3. 85 D-50 - $4500, 45k miles - absolutely the best vehicle I've owned
4. 82 Lynx - $250, 100k+ miles - absolutely the biggest POS that I've owned
5. 76 Duster - $100, ? miles - bought from Dad for parts
6. 87 Dakota - $3200, 80k? miles - dammed carburetor
7. 73 Duster - $3000, ? miles - project car
8. 86 Sunbird - $???, 0 miles (she bought it new) - car my wife had when we got together
9. 90 TranSport - $1000, 100k miles - needed a minivan for the wife
10. 87 Ranger - $1200, 100'ishk miles - just something to drive after totalling the Sunbird
11. 82 Mustang $0 (traded the ranger even up), ? miles - just something more fun to drive than the ranger
12. 93 Grand Cherokee - $2800 178k miles - after I totalled the Mustang
13. 97 Dakota - $5000, 175k miles - needed a truck again when we bought the house
14. 01 Durango - $12,000, 43k miles - for the wife to replace the Grand Cherokee

I think this list is complete, probably forgetting something tho' ... oh, and it doesn't include any of the motorcycles I've owned

My buying habits don't really have a theme, some I drive until the wheels fall off, some I drive until they're wrecked, some I get rid of when repair bills get too high. Some I just get bored with. ****, some I BUY with the wheels ALREADY falling off

I've never owned a new vehicle and probably never will. I can walk into a lot more deals at the 100k mark than I'll ever walk into on a showroom floor. I do a lot of work myself and 200k miles doesn't scare me if the vehicle was taken care of.

[scorrpio]

Whenever seems prudent. In my college years, I drove an '87 Olds Delta88. Was a great car, ran real well, until some idiot not seeing a red light smashed me from behind and drove me nose-first into a truck in front. Car was totalled. Then it was a Toyota Corolla that was a nice little car that sorta could, but eventually we decided it was time to move on.
End of 2004, we drove off a Honda dealership on a brand new 2005 CR-V. One-upped all those sleazy salesmen by negotiating a $500 below invoice via Internet. And this year, when it turned out we'll have another family addition, we figured we need something bigger - and there was no sense lowering the trade-in value by putting more miles on the CR-V. This April, we left CR-V at the dealer we got it from, and departed in a new '07 Pilot EX. By going via Internet and playing several dealers off each other, I got a 3000 below invoice deal (they had some kind of promo going on).

[dkerfoot]

I never did trust any car with under 130,000 miles...

My wife has a Town & Country that we bought when it was three years old, but I haven't made a car payment (for the vehicle I drive) since 1985!

[LCHIEN]

Whenever seems prudent. In my college years, I drove an '87 Olds Delta88. Was a great car, ran real well, until some idiot not seeing a red light smashed me from behind and drove me nose-first into a truck in front. ....

I had an '86 olds delta 88
It was very roomy and comfortable but eventually I came to hate that car. By the time I sold it at 120K miles the stupid heater core had failed four times each time costing about $500 to fix. Apparently the GM engineers had placed the heater core in the dashboard (making it hard to work on) and did not use a heater control valve so it was pressured all the time AND also made it out of some incompatible alloys so every three years the heat exchanger corroded through and leaked antifreeze to a depth of 1/2" in the passenger footwell. Thus stinking up the passenger compartment for weeks and costing a fortune to fix with the promise that it would happen again.

(you'd think after 70+ years of building cars they would know not to do all this bad stuff)

P.S. that was the last GM car I would ever buy.

[kirkroy]

I hang onto cars and trucks for quite awhile. My 97 suburban just rolled over 140k miles and probably won't see 150k for at least 2 years. It's mostly used for moving stuff around although it does get called into duty as a people hauler on rare occasion.

I use a motorcycle as a daily driver and replace them when I get an itch for a new (to me) one, usually about every 5 years. I'm getting the itch now after just 3 years but the model I'm itchin' for was just introduced in 2007 so another couple years should be just right for getting a low mileage used one...