Originally Posted by
xuni4everx
if you are driving that much, have you consider buying Japanese car?
i have 06 Toyota Avalon, purchased $31,000, currently have 289k miles, still running great. All i did was oil change every 5000 miles, brake, tire, and transmission oil flush. I am pretty confident it will last over 350k miles.
Couple of notes. I think you're short-changing the domestic cars these days, and quite frankly, I'm not overly convinced the Japanese ones are quite as good as they used to be in the long term endurance category. The reality these days is that *all* cars are doing a lot better job of lasting a longer time, one reason used car prices are up.
That said, just because a car can last 300k miles doesn't mean I really want to still be driving it by that point. One, I do find that the maintenance costs start really adding up after a while. And our roads around here are bad enough that any car with that type of milage, you're going to be doing more than just oil changes on it. I've lost track of the number of tie rods that I've replaced over the years, and struts aren't all that uncommon either. (The Passat also went through a high number of half-axles.) Cars take a lot of abuse around here, we have 3 seasons, winter, pothole, and construction. I'd also bet that there are far more cars (japanese or otherwise) that at 300k are far more likely to be somewhat problematic than they are to run smoothly with never any problems. And after a while, the potential of getting stranded at the side of the road can get pretty old.
Oh, and of course, both my wife and I have the occasional meeting where the parking lots are not exactly welcoming of foreign cars. It's generally not too hard to work around, but I would say it would play a factor in anything we bought down the road, especially since the american cars really are doing a lot better with longevity these days.
(Couldn't see this while initially responding, but afterwards saw that you were southern california. You folks don't get the freeze/thaw cycles that we get on our roads that really tear them up, and in general, your roads are in far better shape than anything we have here. I've driven out there, and comparatively it's pretty smooth. The difference that makes on a car's life and maintenance cycle is not insignificant. Heck, some of our dirt roads are better than the paved roads, we've got a great example of that on the west side of town - you leave the dirt stretch and wonder whether you entered a war zone.)