Is it a US thing that this is a recent development?

If you bought a used BMW or Volvo in the 90s with 150k km on it, you would definitely have a reasonable expectation that it would last another 7-8 years. The people I've known with extreme mileage have been like 400k or 500k km.

Yes, some of the 80's vehicles from Detroit were very poor quality. Eg it was well known the water pump on a Skylark would only last 30k miles but that's what we put up with.

The manufacturing quality lessons of Honda and Toyota started to hit US in the 90s. I toured a Ford engineering division around then, where they just starting to adopt ideas like empowered workers and continuous measurable improvement. Anyone could stop the line if they saw a problem.

That's very interesting to me to read. My father worked for Ford in the late 70s, and claimed they never stopped the line, even when someone literally had a heart attack on the job.

That may well have been a bogus claim - this was a tour for engineering students they were trying to woo. There was definitely a sense of "look how hip we are, totally not old dinosaurs! Quality is job 1" Either way, they had to change, and they did.

I'd say that was true for Volvo, but BMW has been perceived as a high maintenance vehicle in the US.

I'm guessing the definition of "last" in the US is different. Pretty much any car will last 200k with enough maintenance but historically cars would have quite a bit of down time for repairs after the first 100k. When driving is not optional the lack of down time is MUCH more important. Newer cars will often go 200k without any unscheduled issues that force down time.

Thank you, the key here is Total Cost of Ownership. Can I spend 30k and not replace a thing of 120k, or spend 18k and spend 2k per year on random fixes and deal with things not working. How much time do I spend without my car while these things are being fixed? Do I get stranded on the highway once a year ? Can I hop in and drive across the country? Does it have knee airbags? Does the 200k Honda compare with modern cars on the crash test?

I'm going to bet its a US thing. Apparently, a lot of people didn't know how oil-changes worked and never changed their oil (and other such horror stories).

With service schedules, free warranties, and checkups... that's probably not a problem anymore in the USA. So it could be a change in culture that is allowing people to drive further these days. A lot of cars these days come with 3-years of free service at the dealership, allowing for oil changes (and other maintenance items) to be checked on regularly.

I dunno how it works in other countries, but my understanding is that it wasn't always like this in the USA. So buying used cars with bad maintenance problems was more common back in the 90s. In contrast, you can often get the service history of the used cars you buy today (if you're buying certified used, for example).

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So I don't really know why cars are lasting much longer these days. But I definitely know that back in the day, 100k miles was a thing worth bragging about.

My awareness in this subject only goes back to the mid-70s so maybe your comment references a time before then but I can definitively say that since then there has not been a time when people in the US didn't know how oil changes worked. In fact back then car owners probably had more awareness of how oil changes worked since tasks such as oil changes, spark plug replacement, tune ups, brake drum/pad replacement were much more commonly done by the car owner than they are today.

I'm much younger than you :-)

I've mostly heard horror stories from my dad about how some of his neighbors didn't know how to take care of their cars.

> In fact back then car owners probably had more awareness of how oil changes worked since tasks such as oil changes, spark plug replacement, tune ups, brake drum/pad replacement were much more commonly done by the car owner than they are today.

On that point, I think I can agree, at least based on the stories I've heard of that time. But the question is: what about all the car owners who didn't know how to do those things? The car owners who weren't in the know?

It wasn't like today where you could easily look this stuff up, you had to have been brought up correctly in the correct car culture to know those sorts of facts.

Only when cars broke down, they would come around to the "car guy" in the neighborhood to ask for help. And that's when you hear the crazy stories about how many people didn't know how to handle their cars.

Car owners that didn't know how to fix their cars themselves took them to garages or to dealers to be repaired or serviced. Unlike today most gas stations had garages with mechanics on staff.

Knowing that your car needed regular servicing wasn't some secret fact that you had to somehow search out or be raised in the proper household to know. Like today it was common knowledge and service information as such oil type and frequency of service was included in owners manuals just as it is today.

Did some people then not take care of their cars? Yes, but it is the same today.

As for how you learned to fix or service a car yourself if you weren't raised in the "correct car culture", you went to the library and looked it up in the Chilton repair manual for your vehicle. Most libraries had some physically and a more complete collection on microfilm from which you could print out the pages you needed.

I was in middle school and high school during the 80s. In this time it was common for middle school/junior high students to be required to take industrial arts along with home economics. Industrial arts included things like wood and metal working, printing and in many school districts small engine repair. In my school district during part of 7th grade all students tore down and rebuild a 4 stroke lawn mower engine.

I’m not sure this is it at all, personally. From what I’ve observed, it seems like the focus on leasing has driven average selling prices up. In recent years the car industry seems to have loved using leases to up-sell customers to vehicles they otherwise couldn’t afford on other purchase methods. Dealers appear to encourage this too, I’ve frequently had the “look at the model you could be driving if you leased instead” etc while trying to get a good deal on a purchase method that results in owning the car.

Increasingly many manufacturers apparently don’t really care about the final on the road price staying as low as possible all that much within reason; it’s more about how expensive a car can we push on people at lease rates their wallet will stretch to. The “you can drive this for just $xxx a month!” is the conversation the dealer typically focuses on, probably to obfuscate the true cost as much as anything else. This admittedly applies more to say luxury European brands, where many model lines have (adjusting for inflation) gotten more luxurious and expensive as the focus has primarily shifted to leasing in many markets. There’s similar issues with the truck market as well, and America still buys lots of these every year.