Curious ~ Average Time Frame You Own Your Car?

[Adam]

Just really curious on this one, maybe it’s just me but maybe also the type of cars I tend to pick up.

I am wondering how long do other people tend to own their cars?

While for a long time I would pick up or buy my friend’s used cars, but it seems I tend to only hold onto a car for about 2 years. While I can say driving the car hard or just having fun with them tend to put them into an early grave but now I am starting to think, is it just me?

Now while some previous problems like suspension, leaking fluids to even so many problems it’s just not worth keeping around may influence my decision to junk the car, others I gave the car away to someone that really needed it for a short while and the car wasn’t passing emissions or something.

I do find it entertaining sometimes when friends ask me what cars I owned, I can practically ramble on a long list of cars, LOL. To make things fair, when I am picking up a car, it’s usually pretty cheap, sometimes for $300 and I just try to make them last alittle longer than what my friends had them for.

Anyone else have short-term ownership of their vehicles?

Topic

[Nicholas Clark]

I keep my vehicles as long as possible. Until they are ready for the boneyard. Even then, I have a hard time letting them go. I get attached.

[Jason White]

I have had my truck for over 11 years. Bought it barely over 2 years old and 69K on the clock. Now, it has 287K, still rolling strong but it’s showing it’s age. Had few problems with it. I have no plans to get rid of it any time soon. My next plan is the buy a car, and I want to buy it brand new, and I plan to keep it for life.

[Richard Kirshy]

Have owned my Xterra since new .. 14 years later still runs like a champ.

[Henry]

Well I’m the guy that rolls both ways on this matter, I owned one car for 12 years since new (03 Monte Carlo) bought it with less than 10 miles on it, last year I was T-boned, though prior to that it was running like a champ and had 728k on it (not a typo) I would’ve took it to a million miles but it was beyond repairable after the crash.

While I owned that Monte, I’ve bought & sold or crashed at least 20 cars. I would buy a mustang for one summer, sell it and buy a K5 blazer for winter, then sell it & buy a Camaro for summer then it’ll be a bronco for winter etc etc

I did total a Dodge Dakota RT 5.9, 91 300zx TT & a 98 Honda Prelude SH but insurance paid me out on them. I crashed the Monte maybe 100 times (that car was the worst thing ever in the snow, no ABS, no TCS and its FWD) it was a nightmare driving it in winters even with snow tires but I always fixed it myself and that car is the reason I know what I know today.

[Erin]

The average is this – two years. 12 cars came and went in 24 years of driving. My most recent car I have had less than two months so I do not count it but it is car #13.
Time of ownership ranges from less than a year to about four years. Reasons for ridding them vary. Couple times i needed the cash, a couple of them had a bad transmission, and a couple of them just got to be more hassle than what I could deal with.
For how much I paid – a few of them I paid a lot for, a few of them I just bought them cheap to fix and drive around a little while.

The good thing about buying junkers to fix and drive around is this –
It is not a huge loss when they finally crap out beyond reasonable repair. I actually owned a few junkers where I would buy them, fix them, drive them for a while, then sell them for about what I had wrapped up in it. So aside gas, insurance, and normal maintenance, they would end up costing me nothing to own (except getting my hands dirty)

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