[oldcigarette]

>how long you keep a car is your decision

You do repair work in the desert don't you? I mostly agree with your sentiment. However in the rust belt we spray corrosive agents all over our cars and within 5 years loosening half of the fasteners takes 10 times what you are probably familiar with.

[dbcurtis]

Insightful. When I moved to California from Minnesota my cars were covered with “road cancer”. People looked at the rusted body panels like “What the heck is that? I’ve never seen that.” Now one of my cars is over 22 years old and still going just fine.

[ghaff]

In my experience in the north, cars you drive in winter can get about 15-20 years before you really start to have body rust and things like brake lines start rusting out.

Right before the pandemic, I got rid of a 22 year old Honda del Sol. But it had been garaged for about the previous 10 winters. The mechanics at the dealer always went to look at it because they basically weren't on the roads any longer in New England.

[Scoundreller]

This is why we should rotate car climates like we rotate tires.

Cars should operate for no more than 10 years per climate. It evens out the heat-death and salt-death processes for max lifespan.

Yeah, my tires are old, but they don’t sit in 105F sun either. None of my interior panels have curled up or dried out either. My (electric) coolant pump hasn’t died yet because, well, it doesn’t run as much.

[nradov]

Car tire rubber becomes dangerously degraded after about 6 years even if they're not sitting in the sun.

[throwaway0a5e]

This is a tire salesman trope that the "I like to sound like I care about other people's safety because the internet gives me virtue points when I do that" crowd picked up and ran with.

Ask anyone who works in the tire industry outside of sales and they will tell you that unless your tire was really, really abused or sat in the desert sun all the time 6yr is nothing and you should inspect the tire if you want to get an idea of how degraded it is.

Source: friends at cooper.

Personal anecdote time: Over the last year I went through a two and a half sets of old tires that I accumulated over the years for my van. I was intentionally doing burnouts daily to get through old stock as I planned to (and did) get new ones once I exhausted the old stockpile.

The only tires that had noticeably hardened and performed poorly (but oh boy did they do good burnouts) were the newest of the bunch and from 2016. The oldest ones were from 2009 and the half set was from 2012.

[VectorLock]

>The mechanics at the dealer always went to look at it because they basically weren't on the roads any longer in New England.

Can confirm this. Can't remember the last tine I saw a del Sol.

[JKCalhoun]

In California, one for sale a few blocks away.

[ldkfj]

I have a 2000 Jeep Cherokee that I bought from a friend at 25K miles in the Colorado mountains. It spent a handful of years there, a handful in Salt Lake City, a handful in Lake Tahoe, and another handful in Bellingham, WA, with many drives to Mt. Baker, of course :). She is at 190K and rusting but mechanics love telling me she is in great condition. Most reliable vehicle I have ever known. Simply won’t give up.

[mod]

I sold my 96 last year with 318k miles on it. Ran perfectly.

It's around 325k now, I sold it to an acquaintance.

I ran into a local at the feed store who had one, and chatted him up. Turns out he has a whole little fleet of them. Easy to work on, run forever, cheap, and lots of spare parts around.

[djmips]

My wonder car is a 2000 Toyota Echo with 280,000 miles. It seems like magic that it keeps running. The maintenance has been oil, brakes, battery, ball joints, wheel bearings, shocks and struts and that's it.

[lostlogin]

I are had a series of corollas in the family. Even without maintenance they keep on going, a terrible thing to do but somehow they keep on going.

[throwaway0a5e]

Not sure about the ecology in the plains states but the salt is pretty terrible for our forests too.