The New Math of Driving Your Car Till the Wheels Fall Off

[hunter]

61. I bought a new car once in the 'eighties when I was young and foolish.

I'll never do that again.

I usually keep my cars until something catastrophic happens to them.

The last catastrophe was caused by a distracted driver who went off the road and smashed into my car while it was parked in my driveway. That car would have been good for at least a 100,000 miles more. Sigh. I bought it for $900 and put about another $1,000 into it to make it reliable.

I'm a pretty good mechanic and do most car repairs myself.

In a better world we'd be rebuilding our cities to turn them into attractive and affordable places where car ownership is unnecessary. With a human population of 8 billion this planet cannot support an automobile for every adult. Generally speaking the people with the smallest environmental footprints live in cities, don't own cars, and eat a mostly vegetarian diet.