They also last longer. Cars used to turn into a pile of rust before they hit 100k miles
Hard disagree. Rust is a consequence of the material, not of the vehicle’s vintage. Furthermore, older cars are not only simpler and easier to work on, but also, parts are cheaper. If any 1990s Honda isn’t making it to at least 200k miles, its an anomaly.
There’s a guy in my neighborhood who occasionally brings out a neon purple Geo Storm and it makes me smile Everytime I see it.
Older cars for sure did rust faster because the manufacturers didn’t adopt galvanizing until the late 80’s. Then in the 90’s various other spray coatings and sealers became common. Aluminum is also now prevalent to save weight.
Old cars in the south and southwest didn’t have road salt accelerating the oxidation. But if they were brought up north they caught up quickly. Cars in the north prior to galvanizing would be rotted out in 100k miles easily.
Neat, i’m glad we agree. Early 90’s is still very early in perspective to this audience. I’m driving a '92 and that’s 32 years old now. The cars from that decade last much longer than the 100k quoted above. Also, this is beyond 2.5X the average quoted in the OP article. Clearly, these are “old” cars. In sum, the 100k-till-rust-apart claim isn’t anchored in reality.
You can get the same effect as a new car by buying a used car and then lighting $20,000 on fire when you drive it off the lot.
My '21 is functionally the same cost as when I bought it, minus what I would call normal depreciation. Keeping cars for longer also means used prices are remaining higher for longer, reducing access to getting a new one if something happens to your current vehicle and completely throws out anyone getting a new (to them) car for the first time.
Nice to not read a BS headline reframing things along the lines of “stingy millennials refuse to support new cars because of DEI!”
Yeah bruh, i bought a Camry 11 years ago and a Sienna 7 years ago, i plan to drive them both for 20 years, minimum.
Feel the same way. My Camry is a 2013—recent enough to have a simple display and Bluetooth, but old enough to predate the ‘modern’ infotainment systems.
Believe me, I plan to drive this car until the scrapyards run out of part donors.
Good news for a bad reason.
How dare people decide to hold onto their current cars instead of paying 9% on a 60K car!
Won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?!?
My truck is -07 and it’s the newest vehicle I’ve ever had. I’m not even especially interested about newer models because they just get more difficult to fix yourself and come with bunch of features that I prefer to live without. I prefer a work horse over fashion accessories tho mine is quite nice to look at aswell. Especially from distance.
“Durable goods lasting longer than ever, but spun as economic anxiety”
So many of these cars are designed overseas, too. Its almost as though countries that don’t have unlimited access to pillaged resources consider durability, energy efficiency, and ease of maintenance to be value-adds rather than profit-reducers.
Also, it should be noted that Americans basically don’t make sedans anymore. Its all trucks and suvs.
Sort of. I’m glad we are wasting less in terms of automobile manufacture, but this is caused by price gouging on the part of automakers more than anything.
That means when we all eventually have to buy another car, we’re just going to get fucked.
It’s not just price gouging. Cars are more reliable. you can reliably get to 150k+ miles without major repairs, and get 200+ with some repairs, just replacing wear items. That wasn’t the case in the 80s and 90s.
That’s been the case for at least the past couple of decades. The massive price increases have been over the past 4 years.
Cars have been going up a long time before the last 4 years. 72 and 84 month auto loans being a thing at all is proof of that.
Average car price before the pandemic was about $38k. By 2023, it was $49k.
The trend has been ongoing for a long time due to general inflation and a growing preference for SUVs, but it went fucking bananas during the pandemic, and auto manufacturers have taken advantage.
Every car I have ever owned since I started driving in the 1990s, I have driven until I can’t anymore. Either they got too old and broke down or something was just so expensive to fix that it wasn’t worth it or someone totaled it. All of them have been bought used as well. And I plan to do it again with my 2016 Prius. I’d love to own an EV, but no way am I going to look into getting one until the Prius isn’t driveable any longer. If that’s more than 12.6 years, so be it.
I’m in your camp. Take care of them and drive them into the ground.
I can understand the lure of buying a new car. They’re neat and shiny and have features your car doesn’t. But it’s so wasteful and unnecessary. It’s not like upgrading a computer because it won’t work with any modern software and you won’t be able to use the internet. A model A Ford can drive on the same roads as a Tesla assuming it’s been maintained.
Macroeconomically, it’s not wasteful because cars find new life in resale. It’s definitely wasteful to your pocketbook to get a new car every 5 years.
Right, but only the first buyer gets to decide what’s produced. So someone buying new dumb pickups every two years is flooding the market with gas guzzlers and this results is much more waste than someone doing the same with Camrys. That’s not the same definition of waste that you used though, but I wanted to chime in because the new car buyers define the future used market.
Drove my end of teens car just over 14 years, 230k miles. Transmission finally started to give and honestly for most of its life I treated the car like dog shit, but I learned to do most maintenance myself eventually. I did buy a new 2024 civic and I do love it so far, and it being a Honda I already know how to work on it from my last car. Maybe eventually I’ll find time and a bit of budget to fix my old one but realistically for now I have to travel and work.
Great news. Cars are lasting longer these days. Only late stage capitalism could spin that as a bad thing.
Right? They portray it as a problem rather than as a sign that cars have finally hit the point where they’re not dramatically improving in reliability, safety, and efficiency nearly as quickly anymore. That is not a bad thing really.
For capitalists, a healthy used market is a bad thing. Captial requires continuous production to make returns on itself.
One of the few things anymore that has a really strong used market besides cars is housing, so the capitalists switched their investment from developing new housing to vacuuming up the existing stock to instead collect rent and increase the value of their portfolio.
Safety is still improving. There are quite a bit more safety features in average cars than 12 years ago. Blind spot detection, collision warnings, brake assist, lane departure, rearview cameras, pedestrian detection, more airbags, driver attention warnings, etc.
A lot of those features were more often available in luxury cars, but they are becoming standard everywhere.
Yes, but the difference in safety over 12 years from a 2000 -> 2012 is much bigger than 2012 -> 2024. There are a lot more features now to stop a crash from occurring, but in terms of crash safety which is what a lot of people consider in buying a car, the difference is much less.
Wrapped myself around a telephone pole several years ago in a 2013 SUV and didn’t have a scratch on me. Crumple zones are one of the greatest inventions of the past few decades.
I love my 2012 Mini and want to keep it for a long time, but it keeps trying to kill itself. I won’t let it happen!!
I’ve never had a car loan in my life. I’ve never had comprehensive insurance. I’ve had four cars in 22 years. Only once have I had a car less than 12.6 years old, and just barely. 10y is the sweet spot when I go used car shopping.
My current 2007 C4 grand picasso sitting at 153k km should last me at least another four-five years before I hit my pain point maintenance-wise.
I cracked the windshield on my current car, but that repair cost 1/5 of what 22 years of windshield insurance would’ve cost, ignoring inflation.
Requirements for a car. 1: All wheel drive 2: Small station wagon 3: Manual transmission 4: No touch screen 5: Does not connect to internet
Yup, looks like 2014 is the newest car I can buy.
Get your shit together car companies and maybe I’ll be interested in you products again.
The only newer feature I like is rear view cam. Its really a useful feature.
I do like those, but can add my own easy enough.
It’s* really
Volvo XC70
Always wanted a Volvo, my sister in law raced an V70 R for a while.
Subaru outback is the goat of station wagons
Or perhaps people are starting to realize that you don’t need a new car as soon as your 5-year loan is paid off.
I do okay financially; if I wanted a new car, I’d buy one. I bought mine brand new off the lot 15 years ago, and I intend to keep driving it until I can no longer repair it. Why would I possibly want to buy a new, 5G-connected, spyware-infected plastic shitbox when what I have works perfectly well and probably has another 100k miles of life with a few minor repairs and maybe an engine swap at 2-300k or so?
Only reason Id buy a new car is to get a full electric, affordable, nontesla that has more than 150 horsepower.
How to sound like a boomer without saying you’re a boomer.
“It’s just more stuff to break! I don’t need none of that wifi or internets and touch screens or whathaveya”
Not wanting unnecessary “features“ that are just thinly veiled spyware that overcomplicate every aspect of driving is not a boomer opinion. Wanting buttons you can feel without looking for instead of a giant screen that has automatic updates and needs to have access to your cellphone for basic functionality is not a boomer opinion.
Knowing that tacking voice activation onto every ‘smart’ device, including vehicles, is just an excuse for companies to record everything you say for their shitty marketing isn’t a boomer opinion.
In my experience doing tech work, boomers love that shit and fall for all of it, and it all fucks up in some way much more quickly than should be allowed.
I guess you didn’t see the recent article that studied all the information manufacturers collect on you in these new generation of vehicles. Some notable ones are Nissan and Kia collecting information on your sexual activity and six companies collecting your genetic information all for what? So you can control Spotify from your infotainment screen?
I’m not OP, but if wanting cars that have physical buttons and cars that don’t charge me subscription fees makes me a boomer, then I guess I’m a boomer.
CarPlay and radar cruise control are worth it for commuting imo… but beyond that I don’t care.
2021 civic I’ll be driving into the ground thank you very much.
I frequent the Bay Area (Cali) and wouldn’t dream of taking a car without some semi-autonomous driving features. Sitting in traffic while the car brakes, accelerates and steers is the best.
As a lover of manual transmissions, I think that would make me feel very strange.
Car payments are a poverty trap. I haven’t had one in a decade. Buying a used car for cash is such a better deal anyway. I do need suckers to get those 1-2 year leases though to make my cars cheaper.
