Do you drive a car until the wheels fall off or trade it in before they do?

[Peanut]

I wait for mine to fall apart like the bluesmobile in the movie The Blues Brothers!

 

[phinz]

From what I can count, we've had 30 cars in 24 years of marriage. We've usually had 3 cars at the same time, and at one point we had 5 cars. We've kept cars for years (I still have a car I bought in '96) and then we've kept cars for 6 months and gotten rid of them because they turned out to be hunks of brand new junk. Cars are our primary vice, but we're pretty sure we have the ones we're keeping for a while now. I finally got my Subaru STi that I've wanted for over a decade and she traded her turbo Forester and got a loaded Outback for road trips. We got a used Element for hauling our Irish Wolfhound around because we missed our old Element immediately after we traded it. I think we're set for a while.

 

[jodifla]

I picked other. We stagger it so we have a newer car and then our old car, so we have either no or only 1 car payment. The problem with having two really old cars at the same time I've found is then you don't have a "long trip" car we feel comfortable with AND you run the risk of having to replace them both simultaneously if they both good bad at once, which is expensive. Our "new" car is 8 years old and paid off, and our "old" car is 20 years old with about 225, 000 miles on it. That will be sold this fall for a slightly used SUV family hauler.

 

[Arielle22]

We have 2 cars but will only have 1 car payment at a time. We have a 2004 Mazda MPV van with 250k on it. It is slowly rusting to death (we live by the water while speeds the process up). DH brought the car to the mechanic the other day and the mechanic said we have about a year left. I told DH I hope it is a little longer until our sedan is paid off.

Now that our DDs are grown, we are getting a pickup instead of a van. DH is very excited. He drives 75 miles a day round trip to work so he takes the newer car, However he will probably drive the sedan since it will get better gas mileage.