car foo

[cellio]

When evaluating a car model's maintenance record, I would like to be able to distinguish between "things that tend to break after X miles" and "things that tend to break after Y years". I don't drive a lot; my 15-year-old car has about 78,000 miles on it. So I don't necessarily care all that much if a part that ought to last 100,000 miles dies after 80,000 on a certain model, but I do care if a part that ought to last four years dies after two. I wonder if there's any hope of sorting that out on, for example, the Focus. (Of course, maybe I'll fall in love with the Echo on Tuesday and this will be a non-issue.)

Thanks to schulman for this link, which looks like it will be well worth reading. The car-buying world has changed a lot since the last time I did this, and I don't know how the game is currently played. This should help.

Noted in passing: three of the four sales people I've spoken with ended the conversation with the same words: "I hope we can earn your business". By the third time I was starting to wonder if they were all quoting from the same manual or something.

Comments

Re:

[cellio]

226k is pretty impressive!

I'm pleasantly surprised that I got to 15 years without the road salt eating my car alive. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had off-street parking at home for the last 12 years, though.