200,000 miles is in fact rare, only 1% of vehicles reach it

I really thought that more than 1% of vehicles reached 200K miles in their lifetime. I guess the good folks here at BITOG really understand how to maintain a vehicle properly. I'd guess we exceed the norm here.

From the Autoweek article, the top 16 vehicles that achieve 200K miles:

https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/g...-most-likely-to-reach-200000-miles/?source=nl

Quote "Granted, very few cars, trucks or SUVs clear 200,000 miles in their lifetimes. The average for all vehicles is just one percent of them ever reach the 200k mark"

What I find interesting is that the article also lists the percentage of each model of vehicle that reach the 200K goal. Toyota is very well represented in the top tier. With the Toyota Land Cruiser taking the lead followed by the Toyota Sequoia. Then the Suburban and a Ford, and more Toyotas.
And every time a gm truck over 200k needs a transmission rebuild, it's "typical gm junk". Even if it was used for towing and or had no maintenance. This place has lot of opinionated, inexperienced (well they have their own experience, like their neighbors and neighbors brother, etc) not experience working in the auto industry. Maybe the newest GM trucks aren't so good, but this opinion went on for years back when the 99-07 gm truck was being built and they're one of the best you can get for a cheap work truck.
 
This has more to do with the fact that a car under 12 years old has a 99% chance of going back to the dealer
and a car over 15 years old has a 99% chance of not going to the dealer .

That said an overwealmingly large number of used and minorly damaged cars get exported because foreign buyers pay far more for our junk than can be had locally.

This has destroyed the used market and skews the metric you are looking at
Also kills the low end market and made it a lot harder to get parts cars.

Unfortunate really


That is because for many years you got more for your car at the wrecker than on Craigslist.

It also doesn’t help that a small dent in the rear quarter panel can junk many older cars, it used to be no one had full coverage and would live with or quickly fix, now everyone has full coverage on their 25 yr old car and takes the payoff for a minor issue and the driveable car gets branded as junk with a minor problem.
If the car is the least bit desirable it will quickly move intact from the wrecker to an overseas buyer who will fix it up.
I know someone who bought a 97 lumina traded at the Ford dealer I used to work at for $800. They drove it close to 10 years and put a couple thousand into regular maintenance and repairs. Someone rear ended them and they got $3000 from the insurance company. Same thing happened with the next vehicle although it was a Chevy Sonic that cost several thousand in repairs over only a few years. Not even close to the car the Lumina was.
 
Says the data was gathered on 11.8 million trade in’s.
What about the regular ole Joe beating up and down the road everyday in his 250K miler ?🤔
There’s plenty of guys posting here that have high mileage cars and trucks that’s not included in this info. I’d bet the numbers are higher than what’s reported
Yeah I tend to agree, the study seems based on only one example/test. Doesn’t necessarily take into account people still driving around or even where some of these vehicles traded in go.
 
As many have already pointed out, the 1% figure is suspect for many reasons. I find it odd that there are only two pickup trucks (I don't consider the Ridgeline a pickup truck) on the list and none of them are domestics. I can guarantee that if I walked through the local supermarket parking lot almost half of the vehicles will be domestic pickup trucks and probably a quarter of those will have over 200,000 miles. You can't make me believe that not even 2.6% (the last car on the list) of Ford or GM pickup trucks (Dodge is a little iffy) never make it to 200,000 miles. Old pickups tend to be bought and sold individually, not through dealers.
 
The headline is BS. The data used is for vehicle trade ins for one year, 2020. What the hay is that?
"The mileage listed on 11.8 million used cars traded in during 2020 revealed the top vehicles most likely to reach such a milestone."
You simply cannot justify that conclusion based on that study.

I have 2 vehicles over 200K; neither were traded in last year. I would jump in and drive either of these vehicles across the US without checking the oil, tire pressure, you name it.
I have to believe the vast majority of cars with 200K on the clock and are registered are in people's hands, still in service.
Heck, I would guess that a bazillion Camry/Accord Civic/Corolla numbers would jump out if a scientific survey was performed.

This is the problem with statistics; people can twist resulting numbers into whatever they want; it's BS.
 
Always been fascinated by high milage vehicles that are still reliable due to good maintenance. Some people just want a new car after XXX number of miles/years due to boredom but many get nervous driving older or high mileage cars. I have never felt nervous with ultra high mileage cars, but I look after them. To each their own.
 
I would imagine the BITOG crew maintains their vehicles. .How many vehicles are properly maintained.
 
this has to be BS....my next door neighbors car has 325k, and I know at least 4-5 more just in my small town with 200k +....
 
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Every high mileage vehicle I’ve owned I just sell em private sale. Dealer want give ya hardly anything for 200K mile car, at least not what I’ve experienced

This is my experience. Before I gave my '97 Legacy GT to my sister with over 200k miles I tried to add it to my trade-in. The guy came back with a, "maybe one of the techs will want it, but we don't want it for trade-in." None of the techs wanted it, either.
 
Definitely Surprised the Panther Platform.. Ford Crown Vic, Mercury Marquis, and Lincoln Town Car was excluded but perhaps because the last year was 2011 .. But know personally of several that have gone well over 200,000 .. My 2011 Crown Vic Police Interceptor has 107,000 and uses no oil between changes ..


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A dinosaur lives on.......
 
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Just thinking back about the cars I've owned since I started driving in 1975 over 36% of my vehicles have gone over 200K miles and if I live long enough to put that many miles on my present cars that are under 200K and they don't get wrecked that number will likely go up. Over 9% of mine have gone 500K.
 
And every time a gm truck over 200k needs a transmission rebuild, it's "typical gm junk". Even if it was used for towing and or had no maintenance. This place has lot of opinionated, inexperienced (well they have their own experience, like their neighbors and neighbors brother, etc) not experience working in the auto industry. Maybe the newest GM trucks aren't so good, but this opinion went on for years back when the 99-07 gm truck was being built and they're one of the best you can get for a cheap work truck.
The one and only GM vehicle (Saturn) I owned, the transmission literally exploded before it reached 100k so I'm a bit salty towards them.
 
The one and only GM vehicle (Saturn) I owned, the transmission literally exploded before it reached 100k so I'm a bit salty towards them.
I worked at a Ford dealer and a gm dealer, and Saturn then an independent for a few years. I've seen plenty of transmission failures, on all brands. Especially Ford though. Saturn had the worst one with one of the first CVT transmissions on the Saturn vue. Most other Saturn's had decent transmissions.

My parents had a 95 Windstar blow it's transmission shortly after the head gasket replacement, so I was salty towards them. Especially when I went to work at Ford soon after and saw lots more Windstar transmission failures.
 
I worked at a Ford dealer and a gm dealer, and Saturn then an independent for a few years. I've seen plenty of transmission failures, on all brands. Especially Ford though. Saturn had the worst one with one of the first CVT transmissions on the Saturn vue. Most other Saturn's had decent transmissions.

My parents had a 95 Windstar blow it's transmission shortly after the head gasket replacement, so I was salty towards them. Especially when I went to work at Ford soon after and saw lots more Windstar transmission failures.

Ford has had some real junk transmissions. The CD4E comes to mind-for one.
 
Always been fascinated by high milage vehicles that are still reliable due to good maintenance. Some people just want a new car after XXX number of miles/years due to boredom but many get nervous driving older or high mileage cars. I have never felt nervous with ultra high mileage cars, but I look after them. To each their own.
I have 203k miles on my 16 year old Silverado, 9000 engine hours. It works overtime every day with me, used 9+ hours a day as my office, toolbox, taken off road and usually used on the dirtiest construction sites ever. In the past 10 years of work it broke down once (wheel bearing making horrible noises - still drove but didn't seem like a good idea to keep going). Knock on wood I never worry about it leaving me because it just never does. It had minimal maintenance until I got it from the company a year ago and caught up on everything. It has a crazy number of original parts, stuff I just expect would always need to be replaced at some point before 15 years 200k. The boss wanted to get rid of it because he was afraid of having to replace 2 vehicles at once (the next oldest is a 2010 Tacoma). He figured this truck was an outlier, that most wouldn't last that long. As long as we can keep the frame from rusting out the Tacoma should last a long time still. Only 120k on it.
 
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