What is with the obsession with the miles on a car that doesn't tell you if a car is good or not

Can we apply this logic to women?

Fndndkfk wrote:

Can we apply this logic to women?

Women are not objects.

I do agree with one thing the OP mentioned though. Highway miles are better for the car overall. Let's say you are driving from Austin to San Antonio on the i35. Your journey will add more miles to the car but it is much better for the car than driving the same identical distance by driving from Oltorf Street to Lamar Blvd multiple times a day. If the car is being driven through a city most of the time then it will get exhausted from all the stopping/starting/gear changing. It is bad for brakes, clutch and economy(you also use up so much petrol when you are starting/stopping and crawling through traffic.

Weird post, all things being equal the lower mileage card will probably have more life left in it, and be worth more when you want to sell it on.

Not sure what your point is. Sure mileage isn't everything, a car could have been treated bad at lower mileage, but chances are you will have more problems. If you can tell if the car has been hammered at low mileage, that's a different matter, but chances are you can't.

s/card/car/

You are correct about mileage being an insufficient proxy for the reliability of a vehicle. Use it to your advantage. Go to the use car section of a larger auto dealership. They will have several high mileage vehicles that are in fairly good condition. They have these because they were trades or they picked them up at auction for a good price for the condition. High mileage but great condition indicates that either someone really took care of the car, or more likely the miles were from extended highway driving. You can get a great value with these vehicles, but things do wear out with mileage and time. If you can do any car maintenance yourself or know a trustworthy mechanic, then you can save yourself thousands of dollars.

George Carlin covered the mileage on a woman topic. It's about 2:30 into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE9hWbEglAM

There are basically three tiers in the used vehicle market. Franchised dealers, medium to large independents and "tote the note" lots. Franchised dealers are the only ones who can offer certified pre-owned vehicles through a manufacturer's certified pre-owned program. So, franchised dealers tend to scoop up a lot of the low mile vehicles with no accident history. Franchised dealers also mostly work with the bigger lenders. The bigger lenders do not want to finance vehicles with very high mileage or significant accident histories. The large to medium independents (CARMAX, Echo park, etc.) are generally competing for the same used vehicle business as the franchised dealers but are more willing to work with higher mileage vehicles and vehicles with some accident history. They often have captive lenders who are willing to finance less attractive vehicles. The "tote the note" lots are really last chance credit shop that will buy up high mileage vehicles and sell them with in house financing. The prices they charge for high mileage vehicles is usually well above what you could get paying cash because their customers have very little bargaining power because they have no credit. So, the pricing on high mileage vehicles at small used car lots is usually pretty outrageous.

All cars start to break down mechanically after about 100k miles. And if the service intervals were not followed carefully, the ramification will start showing up after about 100k miles. The main problem with high mileage vehicles is that even the best mechanic cannot tell you which ones will need major repairs and which will not. And when you make major repairs to a high mileage vehicle, you do not increase the market value of the vehicle. That is because the high mileage vehicles generally only go to the secondary "tote the note" lot market where dealers are just looking for 4 wheels to sell to customers who have no choice but to take whatever they can get because of their poor credit.

So, yes. High mileage vehicles can be a great deal if you are very lucky and find one that is priced according to fair market value and not at tote the note lot rip off pricing. But mileage generally does matter. Being under the original manufacturer's warranty can save a lot of money and having low enough miles to be able to buy a good extended warranty is also important. The used vehicle market is generally priced by mileage and does not look to whether the miles were city or highway.

Did it occur to you that the more miles on a car the more internal wear and tear the engine and tranny have? Not to mention suspension issues.

Because it is universally measurable and an easy to use (and manipulate) metric

doctorj wrote:

Did it occur to you that the more miles on a car the more internal wear and tear the engine and tranny have? Not to mention suspension issues.

The transphobic folks check in!

what is the obsession with miles, period? Why can't Americans drive kilometers? What a backward country.

doctorj wrote:

Did it occur to you that the more miles on a car the more internal wear and tear the engine and tranny have? Not to mention suspension issues.

There is way to much panic when it comes to miles. Like suddenly at 100k the car will fall apart, please, and l am a Certified Auto Mechanic. I see cars with 30k that run like crap and cars with 160k that have never had a problem. Miles are just a scam that dealerships use to make you pay more and upgrade.I see cars regularly with 220k miles, 250k, even 300k, but dealerships don't want you to know that.

Not true wrote:

doctorj wrote:

Did it occur to you that the more miles on a car the more internal wear and tear the engine and tranny have? Not to mention suspension issues.

There is way to much panic when it comes to miles. Like suddenly at 100k the car will fall apart, please, and l am a Certified Auto Mechanic. I see cars with 30k that run like crap and cars with 160k that have never had a problem. Miles are just a scam that dealerships use to make you pay more and upgrade.I see cars regularly with 220k miles, 250k, even 300k, but dealerships don't want you to know that.

Strong correlation between miles/use and wear/tear.

Similar to human age. Is every 50 year old less healthy than every 30 year old? Probably not, but most are.

Well..... wrote:

...all things being equal the lower mileage card will probably have more life left in it, and be worth more when you want to sell it on.

Right. Age matters more than mileage in the north where they put road salt on the roads making cars rust out before they wear out. In the south or west coast mileage can actually wear out the drive train before the body/frame/brake-lines rust out.

So... if you are buying a car in snow country, look for rust on the body (wheel wells are a good place to look. For sedans good trick is to remove the spare tire from the trunk and see if the paint is bubbling up below it.) and don't worry too much about mileage if the engine sounds good and the transmission feels strong. You'll be a lot happier with a 7-year old car with 150k than a 15-year old car with 50k.

The car man wrote:

... I do know that a newer car with more miles is better then a older one with low miles, ....

Amen brother. I once bought an old Toyota Supra with low miles and a new paint job. One day I noticed that I was about 3 quarts low on oil.

* Seems like the engine overheated and burnt out the seals, which allowed the oil to leak out

* The engine overheated, because the radiator had rusted so badly, it effectively created an undersized radiator, which could not cool the engine.

* The mechanic said that the only way the radiator would have rusted like that was if the car was sitting for years.

* Since the car was sitting for years, it had low miles.

In summary, if an old car has low miles, it's not because a little old lady was only driving it to church on Sundays. More likely, the car was wrecked or needed a major repair, and the owner could not decide what to do, so he parked it behind the barn for years. That's where the radiator rusted.

I did buy a 1995 Landcruiser in 2003 with 160k miles on it. Kindof high mileage for an 8 year old car. I drove it for the last 16 years and it has had very few problems, despite it now having 260k miles on it. (Yeah, I don't drive much). Most of the repairs that it did need, I did myself, by researching on forums for the cause of the problem, ordering the parts online, and installing them with help from Youtube videos.

So, I agree that "a newer car with more miles is better then a older one with low miles"

What I do know is the insane amount of importance and self worth we put in cars. I’m 42 years old with 2kids. Solid middle class family with strong savings for our retirement and our kids college.

Most of my friends with similar income have little to no savings. They do buy new and very expensive suvs every 5 years.

This year we bought two accords. Each 5 years old with 100k. Paid less than $20k total.

Most of our friends seem fine with $500-600/month car payments. Insane to put that over your retirement or children.

Miles on a car is an objective stat you can put on a description of a car to compare it to others.

None of the other details you mentioned can be listed.

This car was driven crazy aggressive.

This car was not driven hard.

The water pump is about to go on this one.

What is your suggestion of how to replace listing miles in a car's description for sale?

The OP is just a poor sap who is jealous of all of his friends who have new cars. I buy new cars every 2 years and I completely drive the crap out of them. There is now way you would want to buy one of them with high mileage.

Also be very careful about buying cars that have been in a flood and then are reconditioned. Often times cars from the Gulf states of the US are sold off as a fleet of used cars at an auction. Buyer puts some work into them and then sells them to a third party. Then truck them up to a northern state and re-sells them again at an auction. Then they appear on a used car lot and the buyer and sometimes the dealer are unknown to the cars history.