On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:10:21 -0400, Roger
wrote:

snip

Near as I have been able to pin it down the current average is some
where between 5 and 10 years which means even the experts aren't sure
as that's a pretty wide bracket of 2:1

People are keeping cars much longer than they did just a decade ago
and that was longer than the decade before that.

40 years ago we considered a car with 60,000 miles on it to be ready
for the junk yard. Now 60 to 90,000 is common. My wife's old
mini-mini van has almost 200,000 and it's still going strong and gets
around 34 MPG although for most of it's live it was just a tad under
40 MPG,. Now it goes through oil pretty fast, but it leaks out
instead of getting by the rings. It doesn't smoke a bit.

I used to trade often. I'd have saved a small fortune and I'd be rich
if I'd learned to drive them till the wheels fell off.

Although the average turnover was 5 years, I'd think it's a lot longer
than that now. Even in that case I think turn over is the wrong term.
At one time people did purchase a new car on average every five years,
but the old ones did not leave the roads.

I must be bringing up the "bottom end" of the scale for the
average... grins

I've never purchased a new car (started driving in 1979).

My newest automobile is an '81 model.

My daily driver is a '74 model.

Haven't had to make a car payment in 20+ years.

I do tend to "drive the wheels off of them" (parked one with frame rot
that was still running strong with 235,000 miles on it).

Bela P. Havasreti