If you’re going to spend thousands of dollars on anything, you’ll want to invest in something that will last.
This is especially true of vehicles. According to modern statistics, the average driver keeps their vehicle for about 6 years. Meanwhile, the average new homeowner will stay in their first house for 3-5 years. That’s right, statistics show that you’ll actually own a car longer than your first house. And if you play your cards right, you could wind up owning a new vehicle for a lot longer than that too.
If you buy a new vehicle today, how long should you expect it to last? Well, how does over a decade sound?
Believe it or not, the average vehicle on the road today is roughly 11 years old. That’s three years longer than someone is legally allowed to be President of the United States. Even if the same person isn’t driving that vehicle for all 11 years, that’s still long enough for two drivers to get over 5 years of life out of one vehicle. We’ll get to why this is important in a little bit.
That number may seem impressive, but it gets even better. Naturally, any vehicle that’s 11 years old now would have been built before 2010. And in the past decade, vehicles have gotten a lot better. Futuristic features like blind-spot monitoring are starting to become commonplace, and new vehicles are way tougher and safer than ever before. That means modern vehicles easily have the potential to keep running for even longer than 11 years. The only reason we don’t have the exact numbers yet is that we have given these cars enough time on the road to prove their longevity.
To put this another way, The New York Times claimed in 2012 that “200,000 [miles] is the new 100,000.” Yes, you can actually expect a car to keep purring like a kitten all the way up to 200,000 miles, possibly even 300,000 nowadays with proper care. And that claim was still about cars that would be over 5 years old by now!
No matter which way you look at it, modern drivers have the potential to keep their vehicles for longer than ever before. But if you wind up needing a new vehicle in 6 years' time, you’re still getting great value on a new car. Whereas a 6-year-old vehicle in the past might have been on its last legs, a 6-year-old vehicle today has plenty of life left in it. This means you’ll get a lot of your money back, whether you trade your vehicle in or decide to sell it yourself. Who knows, maybe your vehicle can go to a young family member who needs a set of wheels to learn to drive. The choice is yours.
We can’t say how long you’ll live in your first house, and we can’t tell how long you’ll want to keep your new vehicle. But regardless of where life takes you, a modern vehicle makes for an excellent investment. If you’re ready to jump into the vehicle of your dreams, contact me and we can find something that’ll be a perfect fit and will last you for many years to come.
