How likely is your car to last 200,000 miles? Probably less than 5%

Jalopnik.com posted an article listing the car and truck models most likely to last 200,000 miles (using data from iseecars.com).  The list is instructional.  Only the Ford Expedition and the Toyota Sequoia topped 5% (at 5.7 and 5.6% respectively).  Number 10 on the list was the Honda Odyssey at 2.3%.


What you should take from this is that though cars are lasting longer than ever, less than 1/20 will make it to 200,000 miles, and for most models, it's 1 out of 50.  Think about that when you re considering buying a used vehicle with 150,000 miles.

Look at this nice looking 2007 Ford Expedition on sale for $9795.

It has over 198,000 miles.  The Expedition is model most likely to last for longer than 200,000 miles, but only 5.6% of them do. That means that about 94% of this truck's contemporaries have already bit The dust.  This car is an outlier. It looks good. The conditional probability of a car with 198,000 miles to reach 200,000 is pretty high, but much like a 99 year-old person has a good chance of hitting 100%, the odds of that person hitting 105 are lousy. Similarly,  This 198,000 mile expedition may still only be one expensive repair away from the junk heap.  It may be good for years, but it would be foolish to buy it if you can't afford to fix anything that could go wrong.

A new loaded Ford Expedition might list for close to $50,000. That means that this car only costs about 20% of what a new one costs.  The day you drive a used car off the lot, it might drive as well and have as many features as a new Expedition; but make no mistake about it, on average you likely will have less than 20% of the useful life ahead of you as a new vehicle, and that 20% likely won't be problem-free. You can extend the life of old vehicles through maintenance and repair. This is especially true if you are not an armchair mechanic. If you can fix problems yourself, you can extend the useful life of vehicles a long time. If you have to pay for labor. buying a high mileage vehicle can put you on the fast track to bankruptcy.

If you are in the market for a used car, I suggest that you pay attention to mileage. I suggest that you read reliability ratings, and you find out what are the weakspots for a given model.  You pay to have a mechanic check out the vehicle before you buy it.  I suggest that you don't buy an extended warranty. The extended warranty is likely only going to pay part of the cost of the repair, and it might exclude the very thing that goes wrong.