Getting back into the swing of things after March Break might be a bit of a challenge this morning, so good luck.
I was talking with a friend over the weekend and she was telling me that the start of the year has been a challenging one littered with car repairs. As we get into the warmer weather, there is always the hope that vehicles will work a bit better and stay a bit cleaner, after the muddy season.
That conversation got me thinking about how much life there really is in an older car and no, I am not talking the classics I love to look at in summer car shows. Funny thing, this is something you can find online. Apparently the average car is good for 11 years and in Nova Scotia we usually drive 16,600 km per year.
Average KMs Per Year By Canadian Drivers
Anyone that knows me, knows that the vehicles I drive are not usually extra pretty. The side picture is the VW Fox that was left on a trip to the US after the engine blew and I sold it for scrap, haha.
I was very happy to have a matching set of 4 tires on a car that was all the same colour. That is until a deer ran into the driver’s side door and fender on my way to work one morning. Since I used to drive in the smash up derby at the Big Ex, that experience prepared me for the deer plowing into me, by the result is a different coloured door on my car. Even with the multi coloured exterior, last week I reached quite the milestone… 500,000 km. Had to haul over and snap a picture!
(I giggled a bit that Sam Hunt was playing on the radio at the time it rolled with “Body like a Backroad”)
I always thought it would be neat to get to that mark with a vehicle and technically I did with my old square body Chevy a while ago. But back in 1976 the odometers would not roll past 300,000. Since that truck registers in miles and has been sitting at 299,999 miles for 15 years, I know that vehicle has been driven half a million kilometers, but you can’t see it.
I also had an old VW Jetta that got past 450,000 km, but that started to get some higher repair bills, so I decided it was time for it to go.
When it comes to the 1997 Sunfire, this had over 300,000 km when I bought it a few years back. When I purchased the car, there was a list of things that it “needed”. Some of them were fixed right away, exhaust and gas tank, while others like the clutch held on for years before I finally replaced it.
That brings me to the question, would I recommend buying a high millage car? The easy answer is, it depends. I have been lucky twice with my truck and this car, but there have been a number of times that luck was not on my side and that gets expensive quickly.
This video shows some of the things to consider before you purchase a vehicle that have been around the block more than a few times.