In the United States, most people assume that an American car’s life span is about 100,000 miles. A lot of this mentality comes from US cars from the 1960’s - 1980’s that were not built for use much beyond 100,000 miles. Today, most cars are built to last much longer if proper maintenance is done. Now 100,000 miles is a nice round number. What I want to know is if people from countries that use the metric system also have a number of kilometers in which they feel that the car has one foot in the grave and needs replacement?
In my experience cars start to die around 200,000-250,000 kilometres. At 200,000 you have to start thinking about a replacement.
Having recently been in the car market it was pretty obvious that there was a couple of definite points at which the market value of cars drops appreciablywhen the warranty runs out and when it reaches 100,000kms.
When the car actually starts to die is another question altogether. It depends on the car (smaller engined cars tend to start to fall apart sooner than bigger ones), how it is driven (I’ve seen taxis that are still on the road after doing 700,000 kms - the longer span relates o better maintenance and continuous running) and how it is maintained.
I think it depends if you’ve had the vehicle for some time and racked up the km’s yourself or purchased a vehicle with high km’s.
If a vehicle is well maintained and a reliable model to start with you can get many 100,000’s of km of relatively trouble free driving. My 4-Runner had 280,000 km on it when I sold it and it looked and ran perfectly. My SIL’s Nissan Sentra has 1,200,000 km on it… yes, that’s million. It did get a new engine about 50,000 km ago but the car still looks nearly new.
Our van has 112,000 on it while my car has 143,000 km on the odometer. I expect to be driving these vehicles for a long long time and don’t consider them to be over the hill.
Most dealerships here will sell used cars with 140,000 km or less, higher mileage vehicles are often wholesaled out to other smaller dealers. It doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with the vehicles except that many of the buying public seems to prefer that 140,000 and less range.
I figure that any recently produced vehicle should have an minimum expected lifespan of 250,000 km or ten years of 25,000 km year driving.
The lifespan of a car depends not on the measurement system used but on more material factors such as the characteristics of the car (e.g. engine size) and the environment in which it is used (e,.g. how damp is it)?
I live in Ireland, where we have a climate such that any car over , say, six years old is very suspect, and any car over ten years old is assumed to be bucket of rust, regardless of how far it has driven.
Climate does affect longevity of the car, but there is also the cultural/social factor. Cars last as long as the owners decied to make them last. Here in Japan the lifespan seems to be about 10 years - after that people upgrade to a newer car. People usually don’t do major repairs on cars older than that.
Legal and financial concerns also affect car life. It used to be that in Japan, a new car doesn’t need to be inspected for 3 years, then inspected every other year for the next 6 years, and every year after that. An inspection costs over $1000, so it was not economical to own a car over 10 years old. This was changed a few years ago so even old cars need inspections every other year. But it still means that every two years you have to choose between sinking another $1000 into your old car or getting rid of it and using tha money towards a new car.
Mileage (what’s the metric equivalent of that word anyway?) doesn’t seem to matter as much as age, but 100,000 km is definitely a milestone (kilometerstone?). After that it’s an old car.