Although some people will tell you they don’t make them like they used to, the truth is that cars are more reliable now than they have ever been. In fact, the combination of tougher financial conditions and the high level of engineering present in every car has seen the average age of cars out on the road increase.
At one time, the typical mileage seen as the end of life for a car was 100,000 miles. However, for the reasons discussed above, this figure is now seen as closer to 200,000.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should just run out and buy a car with one hundred and sixty thousand miles on the clock. Similarly, don’t hold on to your current car until you near two hundred thousand. For example, the folks over at Autovolo.co.uk suggest that mileage is still a huge factor when it comes to car price, and anything over one hundred thousand is going to scare away some buyers when it comes to selling your car. But perhaps this reaction is less extreme than it was thirty years ago.
Why Is Mileage So Important?
There are two reasons mileage is important when considering a car’s value.
The first is that mileage is closely connected with age, and as we all know cars depreciate rapidly as they get older. It is fairly obvious that higher mileage cars will usually be older.
Currently, the average annual mileage of a car in the UK is seven thousand eight hundred miles. This figure is lower than it was a decade ago, so a good rule of thumb would be that for every nine thousand miles on the clock, that’s a year.
There are exceptions here though. For example, retired drivers may well cover considerably fewer miles without a commute. So, they may have an older car with deceptively low mileage. Similarly, someone who drives a lot for their work will cover far more miles in a year, so could have a relatively new car with very high mileage.
The second reason that mileage is important is that t is directly connected to a car’s wear and tear. The basic idea here is that the more miles a car covers, the more worn out parts become. So, a car with higher mileage is perceived to be less reliable, because its parts will be more worn.
Of course, a car may have had replacement parts at various times in its lifespan, so in this respect, mileage can be misleading. For example, a high mileage car may have had a new gearbox put in fairly recently, in which case its engine may well be more reliable than a lower mileage equivalent that still has its original gearbox.
Going Beyond a Number
Although mileage is certainly something worth considering when you are looking at a car, the truth is that there are a whole host of other variables that need to be taken into consideration. After all, you could have a high mileage car that has been serviced regularly and driven carefully by a good driver. In this case, the car will probably be in better shape than another that has fewer miles on the clock but has an incomplete service history.
For this reason, you should not base your decisions solely on mileage. You are far better off considering mileage as just one of many important factors in creating a well-rounded picture of the car you are buying. After all, there are plenty of write-offs with low mileage!
It is also worth being aware that there will be some variance different manufacturers – some cars are more reliable than others. In this respect, it is important that you do your research and find out how cars similar to the one you’re looking at have fared. Again, there are no hard and fast rules here, but it’ll give you some idea of what you’re dealing with.
