Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Lord. I confess, I'm too cheap. My current car is 18, going on 19, and if it lasts another 5 years, good. I refuse to be sucked into the whole gotta-have-a-new-car thing. Buy very good ones to start with, maintain the hell out of 'em, and just...drive 'em until they literally fall apart.
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There are Volvos on the road that are part of the Million Mile club. It's a point of pride with Volvo that they build to last, and some
really do.
Most cars won't achieve that, but in general, reliability has increased over the decades as manufacturers have learned that customers will pay for quality. Detroit's "planned obsolescence" of the 50's is a thing of the past.
And service on current cars is a much different matter than it once was. The car has a raft of sensors and microprocessors communicating over a local network, and when a service call is required, the mechanic can plug a computer into a diagnostic port, and the car will say what it's problem is.
It's a far cry from the days of the "Gus Wilson's Model Garage" feature in Popular Mechanics magazine, where crafty old mechanic Gus used experience and cute tricks to determine just what the car's problem was before he went in to make a fix.
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Dennis