Since we’ve been keeping track (dating back to 1995) the average age of a car driving the street in the US today is older than ever before. As it stands, the average age for a car today is 11.4 years, up fro 11.2 years old just last year.
There are a couple of insights we can draw from this. First, it’s been pretty thoroughly covered that young people (the sub-30 crowd) are buying less cars. Whether that’s an effect of the recession or a shifting in the culture has yet to be seen (although, teenagers with driver’s licenses has fallen over the last decade as well…).
One positive that could be extrapolated from the recent news is that cars aren’t just getting older; They’re lasting longer. While the golden standard for a well-aged car used to be about 100,000 miles, now it seems like that’s expected, and much more. People now don’t bother bragging about mileage accrued until they hit 200,000, it seems.
While better engineering and more well-built cars certainly deserve some credit for the increased age, it’s still important to take note of all the necessary maintenance for your car. You don’t make it to 200,000+ miles by skipping oil changes and avoiding getting the standard tune-ups at 30, 60, 90, or 100 thousand miles.
By taking care of your car and staying on top of the necessary services by bringing your car or truck in to Newton’s, you can expect a well-built car to last you 200, 250, hey, maybe even 300,000 miles!