Hi John

I had not thought of a Tesla. The question is will the batteries last or get to a point that they are cheap enough to replace to keep it on the road.

Good point about the rolls Royce. If you can afford one of these then you will have no issues meeting up with the maintenance cost!

Tesla model S (mostly aluminium). .

I thought that Tesla don't provide support for vehicles more than 10 years old. Most companies have a cut off date for spares but in Teslas case everything is computerised and not having software fixes could be more of a problem than with less advanced cars.

BPL some of your suggestions are very old school with limited technology likes the caterham and Morgan. Also these might be fun weekend cars that are really looked after by their owners. So good choices

hilux is probably top of the list!

Craig you make some very good points there. On my MX5 the only thing fancy is probably the electric windows! Interestingly, one of them stopped working last year. The part and labour to sort it was £70 which I thought was rather reasonable. You might guess that my car does not go into one of these fancy mazda dealers. There's a very good local independent garage were I live. I suspect if Mazda had look at this it would have been over £200 to fix.

These days, rust isn't the killer of cars: it's complex electrical problems and the failure of control units such as ABS modules.

On some prestige brands (MB, BMW etc) some components like brake assist systems are coded to the vehicle at the factory, and replacement units have to be coded to the car by someone that has the expensive software that can do this task (like main dealers, or a highly specialised independent garage). The costs of these types of problems when the car is over 7 years old would probably uneconomic to repair.

A lot of these things can be repaired at reasonable cost if people can be bothered. Often they can't.

Volume cars are simply not built to last forever. They could be but it is uneconomic to do so. Once they get to about 15 years old they start needing a lot of dedication and effort to keep on the road for a sensible outlay and most people just decide to change to something different.

These days, rust isn't the killer of cars: it's complex electrical problems and the failure of control units such as ABS modules.

Perhaps a few, but these days a minor RTC is much more likely to terminate a car. Modern solid state electronics don't go wrong that often. My Philips 'Hurricane' radio, bought in Zambia in 1973, is still going strong, as is my Akai AA 80-30 tuner amp bought a year later. Indeed, I have seen them advertised recently for probably more than they cost me, defying the usual depreciation of such products.

My Pug 306 petrol (1994). It's not a daily driver - more like a monthly just now - but just sailed through a MoT. Also the 205 petrol (1990) previous to it.

Thanks SLO76. On my walk this morning I did notice that most of the older cars out there were Honda Jazz models. Closely followed by Toyota Yaris. I did see one old Lexus and one Clio that looked like it was falling apart.

I think it might actually be impossible to buy a new car today and for that car to still be running in 2041. I suspect that if I bought a gt86 that it would definitely be able to last but realistically it’s going to be taxed off the road. By 2035 all new cars will have been electric for 5 years. The government will be doing everything possible to get rid of old petrol cars

let’s just hope car makers can reduce the prices of battery powered cars by then!

“ Very few people buy a new car intending to keep it till it expires - they usually get tempted by something more 'modern', shamed by the realisation of how far its value has dropped, or simply bored. The petrol 306 I mentioned above stayed with its lady owner for 20 years after she bought it (I suspect) as an ex-demo from her local Pug dealer, who continued to service it regularly.

There are a few such cars, but I think that is a dying habit.”

I much covet two local examples. Both with elderly owners, a 96-N Ford Mondeo LX and a 96-N Saab 9000CD. Both very tidy and neither has been spottted doing more than 25mph. I especially like the old Saab which was the last proper Saab but the Mondeo will one day be accepted as a classic, being the first truly great driving family car Ford built. Few will survive but I can’t overstate just how far in advance of rivals these were when I was flogging motors in the 90’s as a young lad.

Edited by SLO76 on 12/01/2021 at 23:07