Average car lifespan

[Junkman]

The EU average is 10.7 years, but the UK fleet is the newest at 7.7 years average.

 

http://www.aut.fi/en/statistics/international_statistics/average_age_of_passenger_cars_in_some_european_countries

[Andyrew]

I'd say that what the Car is has a factor.

 

A small cheap hatchback is mostly nailed each day without maintenance. Where as a bigger motor with a higher price tag when new probably gets a little more care earlier in it's life.

 

Pcp/hp or whatever throws this out the window tho.

 

The Majority of people don't care about their vehicles. The amount of people who come in for wipers that have the old wipers so warn the blade itself has completely gone, and people that run the Car untill the oil light comes on or starts to "sound rattly"

[SiC]

Even though our cars in the UK are not worth a lot, their parts certainly are. At least some models anyway.

 

This is why my over 10yr old TiTty is still worth nearly £1900 to the scrap man broken or £2800 if it starts and moves.

[bub2006]

Just a note,I think this thread is open to public viewing so maybe an idea to obscure your postcode?

[SiC]

Yeah just realised it had them on after I posted that, refresh. You must have been quick to load it.

[bub2006]

I happened upon them at same time as you posted! They gone now

[SRi05]

My cars are 25 and 22 years old. Oldest one after that on my street is 12

[Noel Tidybeard]

for most cars 10-15 years

for Bub 3 months! lol

[Bren]

Sadly cars would last longer were it not for the cost of certain parts and labour.I remember paying £50 for a clutch kit for my mk2 cav - it was fitted in an hour. You cannot do that on an insignia.

[Junkman]

Fact is that as soon as you leave the UK you see a lot more old chod littering the streets.

It's not the cars' fault there aren't any old ones here, it's the people's.

Outside the UK "saving" doesn't necessarily mean to take out another finance plan.

[bub2006]

for most cars 10-15 years

for Bub 3 months! lol

3 months?? Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad someone has faith. I'm aiming for 3 weeks. Baby steps and all that

[Ohdearme]

I think it’s about 15 years - which, absurdly, means we’re about to see people start chucking away the first of the MK2 Focus’ and MK5 Astras in bigly numbers.

 

I do 100 miles a day and I’m frequently the oldest relic en route. The Avensis is 20 years old in August.

 

By my reckoning I've had Ken's Galaxy for about 78 days and whacked 2,400 miles on it in that time. It's actually on my insurance as the car I do business miles in despite being 20 years old (R reg) and collapsing door lock at Tesco's aside it's been fine and no FTP yet.

 

I find it highly amusing viewing all the client's new cars in the car park and then arriving in aged jalopy.

 

I still remember the look of bemusement on a coppers face when he pulled me over on the commute to a client one morning in Leeds...

 

I was in my Mk1 Shogun Pez V6 that was registered in London. He confessed he pulled me over expecting to find a different sort of character driving (said there'd been a lot of caravan thefts this way) and couldn't get his head round the fact it was legal, taxed and tested, let alone that I'd be mad enough to commute up the M1 regularly in such an automobile.

 

If it wasn't for the fact two scrotes pulled the gaffer taped sunroof off, hopped in and nicked the car, I bet I'd still be running it.

[forddeliveryboy]

Sadly cars would last longer were it not for the cost of certain parts and labour.I remember paying £50 for a clutch kit for my mk2 cav - it was fitted in an hour. You cannot do that on an insignia.

Our hourly rates are higher than a lot of Europe, too - in large part related to our artificially high property values.

[MorrisItalSLX]

It shocks me how cheap cars are in the UK, relative to age.

All these fully MOTd cars for less than £500, where I would be spending over $2000 for the same thing. Insane!

I have found this to be especially true for Jaguar XJs, specifically X300s and X350s, where you can get them for a grand or two in the UK and the equivalent car in Australia cost ten grand minimum!

 

The average age in Australia would be, in my eyes, approximately 20 years, but you still see plenty of 1990s cars about and even the occasional 1980s one.

 

I rarely see a car older than mine in daily service, but my car is 34 years old so not a good benchmark.

[Guest Conan]

Do your part to increase the average age of chods on the road!

 

Join Autoshite Foundation today.

[barefoot]

Isn't the UK's economy almost entirely based on idiotic housing prices and the constant churning of motor cars?

[artdjones]

I'd say quite a lot of Japanese stuff would have a market in Africa, because 8 or 9 former British possessions drive on the left.

[brownnova]

There’s only one car older than any of mine on my street and that’s a Morris Minor in a garage across the road which I’ve never seen leave the garage.

 

Mine is also always the oldest in the car park at work, and it gives me pleasure turning up at management meetings in a 29 year old Mazda whilst they all get out of their identical black Audi’s!

 

Thing is I like running older cars, I could get a new one but I simply don’t want to.

[tooSavvy]

I would be interested to know what proportion of vehicles registered new in the U.K. are subsequently exported for further use in another country rather than broken up.

Excluding 4x4s stolen for darkest Africa... At least my "ideal for export" Toyota *4A-F hasnt been de-roofed and containerised

 

*Gold Standard 'no ECU' motive power

[The_Equalizer]

Isn't the UK's economy almost entirely based on idiotic housing prices and the constant churning of motor cars?

 

And a number of spivs in The City.

 

Actually, I discovered this week that the UK is the World's 8th largest manufacturer and had moved up a couple of places in the last couple of years. That cheered me up no end as I am rather bored with people bashing what is relatively a very good spot to live.

[MiniMort]

We're a family that doesn't like to sell a car just because it's old. We sold a 1999 Citroen Xantia Estate in 2014 (just because it wasn't powerful enough to tow the new caravan (which replaced the 1984 Swift Corniche)) and because the car had been taken care of it was sold to a careful owner and is still around today. Naturally a car can run forever so long as it has some care and attention.

 

I think cars are living longer than they once did though. Our 1975 GS didnt see a decade and our 1979 Chevette was scrapped in 1986.

[chadders]

The EU average is 10.7 years, but the UK fleet is the newest at 7.7 years average.

 

http://www.aut.fi/en/statistics/international_statistics/average_age_of_passenger_cars_in_some_european_countries

I think it's a combination of PCPs,expensive repairs and keeping up with the Jones'.

The latter especially amongst 'management' as in the places I've worked there's a lot of peer pressure to have a new Audi, BMW etc..

I ran a Punto 55SX and took a car allowance but as a working class Northerner I was a bit different anyway

 

The wealthiest people I've come across tend to run 15+ year old cars whereas people who you would expect not to have 2 halfpennies to rub together put themselves in hock for a new Juke.

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens to PCPs when interest rates finally get back to 'normal' levels.

[fordperv]

Bloody good shot.

A bit of blinding sir

[83C]

I think cars are living longer than they once did though. Our 1975 GS didnt see a decade and our 1979 Chevette was scrapped in 1986.

 

 

This. I started driving in 2001, the classifieds were full of cheap 8-10yr old cars that were in need of repairs, usually welding. My Escort was £225, needing rear arches and floorpan patches at 11yrs old, my first Cavalier needed the sills doing at a similar age. 405s held their money a bit better because they didn't really seem to rot (a diesel 405 was still £1000-£1500 compared to a diesel Cav at £750), but in general a car was going to have rust if over 10 years old. Fords in particular could be dated by how many layers of sill there was - 8-10 yrs for the original, plus 4-5 yrs for each layer of thin pattern-pressed sill grafted on over the top. Now cars are rusting out after 20 yrs, even Land Rover has worked out how to slow down the tin worm. Now it seems electrical and mechanical borkage are the main reasons for scrapping a car, as electronics and MoT requirements for said electronics to work properly put the cost of repairs beyond the pocket of the people running them. 

[Junkman]

Isn't the UK's economy almost entirely based on idiotic housing prices and the constant churning of motor cars?

 

The idiotic house prices are a psychological problem. People in Britain are oblivious to any form of scam, so they can call a pile of substandard rubble home, that in reality is owned by the organised crime they bailed out with the taxes they paid for the last eleven years and ongoing, which is crystal clear proof that the entire financial system is merely based on the assumption that everyone is a complete fuckwit.

 

Those newfangled motors are only decoration for the driveways of the above and company car parks, motivated by three factors:

 

- 70% keeping up with the Kardashians. See also holidaying by putting oneself through the ordeal of spending two weeks in boring shitholes like Cyprus and Mallorca.

- 15% entitlement complex.

- 15% the rigorous refusal to maintain a car, or anything else for that matter. See British back alleys as a prime example of the latter.

 

None of this has anything to do with an economy in any form or function. It's the purest form of the happy slaves being the most vigorous opponents of freedom.

 

The post Brexit economy, however, is solemnly based on parking charges, as has been found out by people visiting from other countries by car this year.

Hitherto the British economy constituted of a British subject borrowing money with interest from an Englishman serving as a gleeman of a foreign corporation, so it can import some shiny shit from China it doesn't need.

 

Besides, if there is one thing I learned in life, it's the fact that anything that's good for The Economy is bad for me.

[BorniteIdentity]

There's no doubt in mind, that the cheapest car is the one you already own and...

 

1) Keeping on top of a car, and not letting the job list build up

2) Fixing rather than replacing

 

is now easier than it was 20 years ago, better for the environment (unless doing 50k a year in a Trabant) and financially prudent.

 

When I was 8 (1990) it would have been UNIMAGINABLE for my Dad to be driving about in one of the last MK2 Cortinas.  In fact my old Dot had a 1983 Volvo 343 and we saw it as the 'old' car that was just for running about town in.  Now, at 20 years old, I can still buy every single spare conceivable for my Avensis which now has 241,429 miles on the clock.  

 

I've spent the last week trying to work out what I'll do if the MOT isn't kind in May, or if 3rd becomes such a bitch to select that I can't use it any more.  The sensible option is to fix it and carry on.

 

Durable motoring innit?

[Junkman]

You cannot fix a newfangled (I deliberately don't use the term "modern" here. Cars have been modern since the 1930s) car. They are carefully designed to rule this out, which is another fascist scam to kill private initiative and small businesses, so the corporations can take over every aspect of life. Refer to "enslavement".

[PiperCub]

Oh no.   Does all this mean I have to look at Jukes for at least another 12 years?

 

Oh god, let's hope not. 12 more days is too much. 

 

As someone who's newest vehicle of any kind is now 25 years old (the Rover 214 - M-reg) I still can't get my head around seeing things like I did last week - that is a scrappy transporter loaded with cars from 51-plate to 59-plate (only one was accident damaged by the way). Have seen a couple even newer in the last month too. 

 

I appreciate it's as Junkman says that it's more to do with how economically fixable something (ie: is it worth spending the money or not) is rather than them rusting or going out of style but it's still hard for me to fully understand. 

[The_Equalizer]

You cannot fix a newfangled (I deliberately don't use the term "modern" here. Cars have been modern since the 1930s) car. They are carefully designed to rule this out, which is another fascist scam to kill private initiative and small businesses, so the corporations can take over every aspect of life. Refer to "enslavement".

 

Although is this not a double edged sword for them? If they become too expensive/complicated then second-hand values go to the floor and/or people get hacked off with owning this type of car - think BL in the 1970s when their products were autoshite from new. These hacked off owners will switch to another manfacturer that does not have the same problems. Also, cars just become throw away items (I would suggest they always have been to some degree). As an inadvertant plug (as I think Datsuncog's write-ups are rather good and do go under the radar on this board) I attended an auction with him last week. Cars were stupid cheap including things I with a MoT and I would be happy to drive. The write up is here:

 

http://autoshite.com/topic/32260-for-chod-ulster-ballyclare-auction-write-up-concludes-wed-jan-16th/page-11

 

Basically you can pick a usable car up for £500.

[sierraman]

Mine get dragged when uneconomical to repair at between 15-20 years old.