Why did I have to review my own pre
conceptions and prejudices? Well I grew up in the 80’s and got my first car at
18 in the mid 90’s which meant it was a car built in the 80’s. In fact it was a
1984 Ford Fiesta 950 Popular. Now back then when you were looking for a car
there was one cardinal rule that was passed down the generations father to son,
that rule was twofold, first “Don’t buy a car with more than 100,000 miles on
the clock” and secondarily “sell your car before it gets 100,000 miles on the
clock”. The very thought of having to
tell someone back then what the mileage was on your “new” car when they asked,
and they would ask, and getting that blank look that hid the thought behind it of
“arrrhhh couldn’t afford one with lower mileage”. That sounds crazy now but
back then it was a real pre-cursor of social standing and the price of cars
dramatically changed over this all concerning figure.
This was with good reason, cars in
the 80’s particularly in the UK, were not well built and their engines were
pretty much shot by this magic number. That assumes it hadn’t rusted away long
before, after all this is a time before galvanised bodies. A rust spot or chip
was something to attached with a touch up pen immediately. Back in the 80’s car
were built to only do 100,000 miles so everything bolted to them was also built
with that in mind.
This brings me to my
pre-misconception, over the last 20 years the reliability of engines, and I’m
really looking at diesels here, has quite honestly been proved to turn this on
the head. It’s no longer unusual for a VW 2ltr TDI engine to happily rack up
250,000 miles with minimal maintenance. Hell its first major service which
would need a timing chain changing isn’t far off the 100,000 mile mental speed
bump. Not only would that, but the build quality of the rest of the car also
mean wear would be minimal. Basically cars are far superior there days and
built to last.
So here I am looking for a family
wagon and despite knowing all this that voice in the back of my mind is still
telling me, as I scroll through the Autotrader/Ebay adverts, to ignore cars
with over that irrational benchmark mileage. Not only that but smirking at some
of the cars verging on 200,000 miles. What’s worse, I know for a fact none of
my friends would batter an eyelid, even my Dad wouldn’t comment on it these
days, but still it’s there niggling at the back of my mind.
Hopefully this entrenched thinking
will be lost to the current generation, I’ve already mentioned modern cars if
maintained correctly, can last and last forever!!!!! But it properly wont as
cars have become more so a social status and very disposable and cheap
accessory leading to its own problems but that for another article.
Oh and just to let you know the car I
finally bought a BMW 3 Series Touring, and the mileage??? Well I failed, it had
70,000 miles on the clock.
No comments:
Post a Comment