Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Driving the same car for 53 years

I'm sure many company heads start hyperventilating when considering products that last 50 years. What will they sell after everybody has one as is satisfied?
It sounds like a stupid problem, that quality might ruin the economy, but I'm sure we must be looking wrongly at it somehow.
For example, if things last, you need buy much less, that's good for the individual's economy. And if that then is bad for companies' or countries' economy, they have based their income on false idols.

2 comments:

Bruce W. said...

Interesting, but take a closer look. She says she has about 115,000 miles on the car, after 53 years, or about 2200 miles a year. The American average is about 10,000 per year. She also says she changes the oil about every 1000 miles, or, at her usage rate, every 6 months or so. The body also looks like is virtually new--no rust. Cars at this time rusted at astonishing rates--I had a 57 Buick. I have to believe there has been extensive work done on it.

If you minimise your use of a car, and pour money into maintenance, you can do the same thing.

Do you really want a 53 year old car, or a new one with all of the latest safety features etc?

Russ said...

In my opinion, the soon to be 3 million mile 1966 Volvo is a much more impressive story:

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130716/CARNEWS01/130719868