Generally my husband drives when we’re together because I ask him to. I like being a passenger and looking around, and since I drive a lot for work, I enjoy the time off.
My dad would buy a new car every. single. year. Drove my mother completely nuts. The new car would always be random too, one year it would be a fully tricked out conversion van with all of the candy. The next year, he bought a Ford Fairmont with vinyl seats and no radio (not even AM).
Both my parents drove beaters. We were fairly poor growing up. My dad had an old '70s impala in the '90s, and my mom drove a beat-up '80s Taurus during the same period. After they divorced, he bought a recent Grand Am and she bought a recent Saturn. That’s all I really remember about their cars.
In my current relationship, we both had our own cars already. He drives a 2005 Saab and I drive a 2006 Ford sedan. Pretty similar, although his is a bit more sporty. It’s hard to say what will happen after that… my car will be paid off in June and his has a couple more years on financing. His is also a stick and I don’t know how to drive stick. When we go anywhere together, usually he drives but sometimes it’s in my car (if he’s low on gas or whatever).
My dad didn’t drive for several reasons, including being blind in one eye. So we had one car at a time, and Mom drove until the kids got old enough to want to share it.
My gf shops around and finds a two or three year old nice car which she buys. She has it washed/detailed regularly and it looks beautiful. She drives it until she has a reason to trade regardless of mileage.
I buy a new vehicle and never wash it. I haul the dogs every day and carry kayaks on top and wet gear inside. We joke about my SUV being a single passenger vehicle. I never back away from driving back trails that are hard on the vehicle, and I get plenty if dents. When the odometer is between 150,000 and 200,000 I trade for new.
We are very different.
We have an 03 Camry and an 03 F-150, and my wife will normally drive the car, and me (normally) the truck, but there are exceptions, depending on the situation . . .
“Her” car has 83,000 on it and “my” truck has 68,000, and due to our age, these are
likely our final vehicles, as they both run perfectly, and I change the oil and filter every 2,500 miles . . .
If we wanted a new car or truck, we would just buy it, but I hate dealing with car dealers, as my perception of them is that they are mostly crooks who will be caught tomorrow, and if the vehicle was free, I would still hesitate to deal with them . . .
My parents both drove older cars. (As did us kids, as we sequentially got our licenses and obtained the coveted hand-me-down 82’ Diesel Suburban.) My dad tended to drive the older of the old cars, though. Now that they’ve been divorced for years, my mom is still limping her old Civic along, while dad has a relatively decent car and truck.
My family all drive older vehicles. The wife always gets the newer (or more reliable) of teh 2 we drive. I’m much more capable of emergency roadside repair than she!
When we go somewhere together, I almost always drive. It’s been that way since our first date, I don’t expect it to change. Not that I mind - if I’m in a vehicle I’d rather be the driver.
My husband has the nicer car, but mine is the “family” vehicle and I’m the one who drives everywhere.
My parents only ever had one car, but with my dad in the navy and gone a lot, there was no need for two. For us, my husband always gets the new car and I get the hand-me-down, mostly because he cares and I don’t. He like gadgets and cruise controls and automatic transmissions, while I like as few bells and whistles as possible with my manual transmission. I also don’t care what the vehicle looks like as long as it is reliable. It might be different if we had small children to cart around.
Generally speaking my parents did that, although it was relative; neither had a “nice” car; it was more defined in degrees of beaterhood.
My wife and I have the same thing going, except more in a nice car way. She’s got the 2010 Passat SE, and I have the 05 Dakota pickup… but my pickup isn’t a beater by any stretch of the imagination- the paint’s still shiny, everything works well, and there’s only one noticeable dent that I can think of, and it’s on the bed rails, where pickups typically get dented if they’re used for anything other than simply driving.
I drive a Jaguar and my wife has a PT Cruiser, so no.
My wife drives the new car, which is also the family vehicle. I drive the old beater.
The reason for this is two-fold - she feels that newer is “safer” and is very driven by fear. In her mind, buying a used car would surely put her in a death-trap that would explode into a fiery ball of flame just by turning the ignition key.
She also has a different sense of money than I do, so having a new car - with the attendant costs - is not an issue FOR HER ("…because I NEED a new car, because it’s SAFER…"). Whereas I drive an old beater in order to be able to pay for the new car.
Not married, but I’d want the Mrs in the newer car, ideally something with run-flat tires - being stranded is more hazardous for women, and I’d want to reduce the odds of it happening to my SO. Plus, being a gearhead I’ve got a better chance of getting something old and broke down running again.
When I was a kid, my mother (after she learned to drive, which must have been when I was about 12) always drove the newer car and my father the older, on the grounds that he was much more capable of dealing with any mechanical problems that might arise on the road than she was.
As an adult: my wife drives the older car, but it’s not a beater. She’s done a lot of restoration work to it, and it’s her creation. Absent an emergency I don’t drive it.
My husband’s and my cars are about ten years old, and both in pretty good condition.
Yes my mom always has had the nicer car. Dad’s a smoker and worked at a factory so there was no reason for him to drive a nice car. Now, mom drives the two grandkids around so they make sure her vehicle is always in tip-top shape.
Dad’s car isn’t much older, and they do take it out when they go out together. I think to avoid getting the carseats (which are in mom’s car) all smoky.
When we were little all of our cars were absolute pieces of shit so mom and us got set up with the less shitty one at the moment (thank goodness for them that we didn’t need carseats forever, I guess).
We’ve always had pretty much equivalent cars. (In fact, one year we both drove home in new '05s; still have one of them.) I seem to keep getting rotated back to the minivan, though, but I like my Odysseys.
My mother always got the beater, though. She finally complained and they ended up buying a '68 Mustang off the showroom floor, which she drove for the rest of her life (25+ years). I still have it.
My wife absolutely loves her little 1969 VW Squareback. I got a nice Chevy HHR the other day - do you think wifey will drive it instead of the VW? Not on your life. The VW has been her ride for almost 40 years, and she sees no reason to change.
In her defense, I will say that the car looks like it just came off the showroom floor, and runs like the proverbial sewing machine. And is a real attention getter at the local parking lots.
Buying cars is kind of a hobby for my dad. Not that he has a giant collection of cars, rather he trades up every year or two. Been doing it since I was a kid. At some point he would just disappear on a Saturday morning and come home with a different car. He’s had a lot of fairly nice cars of all types, but at least he was practical. When my siblings and I were little we had a series of station wagons and vans. We had a VW bus at one point. When we moved to a new house and were finishing the basement he got a gigantic F-350. Once my siblings and I didn’t need to be chauffeured around, he had, among others in some order, a hard-top convertible Mercedes coupe, a Porsche Boxster, a Corvette, a Land Rover, a Prius, and currently he’s got a Mercedes E-Class wagon.
My mom OTOH over the years was content with her '86 Nissan Stanza hatchback, a '92 Volvo 240 (which eventually became mine), and a '95 Acura Legend, which she drove until she retired a few years ago (it then became my sister’s). At least they were well taken care of.
As for myself and my SO, she’s got the newer car, a base model '09 Toyota Yaris, while I drive an '04 Crown Victoria LX with all the options. It’s debatable who has the “nicer” car. I definitely have her beat in the size department.