this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Dont sleep on either "many new cars are electric" or "cars last a fuckton longer".
Per-capira "total cost of ownership" for a car from purchase to retirement hasnt increased nearly as much as first-sale price would suggest. (Though the "financing cost" of the one-or-more transactions is a separate matter.)
Never buy new. Let someone else deal with the frequent hassle of getting all the problems fixed "under warranty" while the lemons get sent to salvage. Give me the vehicles that survive. Case in point, I bought my first car for $500, drove it for 24 years, and the biggest age-related expense was rebuilding the front end for $600. I sold the car in 2011 for $1000. I bought my current SUV in 2009 and the biggest mechanical failures have been replacing the power steering pump and the 4WD short axles.
I had a friend who insisted he needed to spend all his money buying new cars. He tried to tell me how much money he was saving because the dealership was fixing all the problems for free. I pointed out that he had barely even driven his new car because it was spending more time at the dealership every week or two and he was constantly wasting his own time taking it back for yet another problem.
What year was that? I don't believe a $500 car would last 24 more years. These days you can't even buy a 24 year old car for $500
It was a '74 Pontiac LeMansthat I bought in 1987. And sorry, I did forget about one thing... I had to replace the transmission a couple times, but back then you could get them from a junkyard for cheap, and it only took a couple hours to replace. Probably would have lasted a lot longer if I'd taken the time to rebuild the clutches though. Of course it's not like you can drive any vehicle forever, there was the maintenance as things like bushings and alternators wore out. For this discussion though I don't count things that you have to do on any vehicle with 300k miles on it. Everything wears out eventually, and yeah even the motor was starting to smoke by that time.
Yeah kinda burying the lede on this. Cars built in the 70s had a much more simple, serviceable construction.
By the time you let it go, it was also probably grandfathered in to emissions requirements because it's a classic car.
Anything from the 90s- 2010 will not hold up like that one did.
My secondhand 1999 Crown Victoria went 284000 miles over 19 years. I had to put some work into it, but when I traded the car in, everything still worked, minus the trunk lock (super glued by frat boys) and the driver door handle (snapped off in my hand, twice, replaced with channel locks clamped onto the remaining nub).
I mean, my SUV is a 2004 and seems to be holding up pretty well. I give it full synthetic oil and take it off-road occasionally, so it gets a wide range of treatment. Maybe I'm just not as bothered as other people are by the occasional bit of maintenance. I just replaced the thermostat this Fall, which was certainly a lot harder than on the old car because this one is buried down along the side of the engine, but it was still a pretty simple job.