Is it a good idea to buy a car with High mileage?
Most car buyers shy away from buying cars with high mileage. Are they justified in doing this or simply following an outdated belief that has been made irrelivant by modern and advances in technology?
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One question that is often asked when buying a car is; Should one buy a car with high mileage"? This question arises because, a car with high mileage means it has been driven an awful lot, making it a good candidate for breakdowns and so on. For some buyers, a car with over 100k miles is in a "don't buy" area.
On clearer examination however, you will find that mileage does not really matter that much in modern cars. What really matters is the maintenance history. If everything in a car works as expected, the mileage should not be a stumbling block.
In fact, most major car manufacturers now sell their cars with 100K mileage warranty when bought new.
Thanks to modern technology, what was once considered an “end of life” for most cars, is now barely a midpoint for a well-maintained car. The lifespans of car engines and components have quadrupled and with proper maintenance, most modern cars can easily go more than 500K miles and still keep running.
For example, the Spark Plugs in most modern cars don't have to be changed for the first 100K miles. Some people have reported getting 200K using the original Spark plugs that came with their new cars.
Cars are made of components:
All this said, cars are made of components and components have expected and built-in lifespans before they fail. What this means is that, if you buy a car with exceedingly high mileage, expect to change some components. By design, these components need changing, due to wear and tear from usage.
So how did we get this high mileage avoidance to begin with?
To begin, it is important to point out that this high mileage avoidance is an American thing. The origins goes back to how cars are bought and paid for in USA. Most cars in USA are financed. Being that they are financed, the lenders depreciate them, knowing that the useful expected lifespan of a car back then was approximately 4 years.
After this number of years or a certain number of driven miles, the cars were adjudged to be not worthy of financing. To add to that, the average lifespan of most car engines back then was no more than 50K miles. Combining these two factors meant that car buyers could not get anyone to loan them money to buy such cars.
This practice has not changed very much because it is profitable to lenders and the Auto industry. As advances in modern technology now makes cars last very long, the practice is slowly changing but not fast enough due to the profit motives of both manufacturers and financiers.
In fact, most lenders are now financing cars regardless of mileage. So, should you buy a car with high mileage? The answer is YES, if the car is properly maintained. With that in mind, don't let high mileage keep you from buying a well-maintained car. Cars of today and cars manufactured in the past twenty years, can easily exceed 500K miles if taken good care of.
