[marincounty]

Good for you! I will never understand the mostly American tradition of buying a new car every few years? Cars that are so complicated; the owner is forced to bring it to the shop for every hiccup. A lot of cars/and trucks from the late 80's to around 2008, are pretty easy to work on, and with the proper maintence can last 300,000 miles. And if your not afraid of getting your hands dirty--you will never have to pay a mechanic $120/hr to work on your vechicle. These newer vehicles are so complicated--a lot of shops do a lot of learning on your dime. (I have a Toyota with a 22R engine. It has one 350,000 miles and it's never seen a mechanic--except for smog checks, and never failed once. Actually it did fail once, but it was due to an error in a Motor Emmission publication. If you have an older car, and need a Smog check; make sure your smog shop has access to Mitchell manuals online(OnDemand5). They are highly accurate!

My dad gave me some good advice years ago. He told me to buy a year specific service manual for every automobile you ever buy.

[rgbrenner]

mostly American tradition of buying a new car every few years

The average car on US roads is 11.4 years old: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-automotiv...

The average car on EU roads is 8.6 years old. In fact, in the EU only Estonia and Finland keep their cars longer than the US on average. http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/average-vehicle-a...

[spydum]

would be interesting to see vehicle age by geography. I suspect all the rural farmers are the ones skewing the average (it's not unusual to have a 20-30yr old truck out on the farm.. You can fix them with the same tools as your tractors).

[lenocinor]

And 6.6 years in Japan, in 2011: http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/12/02/are-cars-losing... Americans do a lot of silly things but selling cars too quickly isn't one of them (relatively speaking, at least).

[bluetomcat]

It's due to the perceived wisdom that every car suddenly becomes a lemon after hitting 100k miles. The "low social status" attributed to driving an older car is also at play.

Here in Europe, it's not uncommon to see cars in good shape which have over 400k miles on the clock. If you think about it, a European or Japanese mid 90's car with no rust and a rebuilt engine will give you more trouble-free miles, for a fraction of the money.