I was on one of my long occasional one business day trips and realized that my car was going over 100K. Its a 2013 Ford Fiesta that I bought in 2014 at a discount so I have put on a lot of miles for me. I also realized that this is most likely the only car that I bought from new that hit 100K in around 40 years of driving. I have bought high mileage beaters on occasion that have rolled 100K but usually I got them with 80 or 90K on them. This latest Ford Fiesta has been beyond reliable. The only non wear component repair was a bad resistor coil on the heater that I DIYed for $20. it didn't strand me but made for a hot drive home once. It has a broken lumbar support spring in the drivers seat that is $40 part and 8 hours of work to replace so I live with it. I have changed front rotors once and front brake pads twice plus gone through a few set of tires. It has predictive oil changes and given my long trips it goes about a year before needing a change. I use synthetic oil and rarely if ever do I add any. Still gets 40 to 41 MPG on the highway with the cruise set to 75 mph. No trace of rust. Best thing to call it is an appliance. I had a Honda Civic before this for 12 years but wasn't working my current job so it didn't hit 100K.The strange thing is given my current early retirement plans I don't see me buying another car that I will drive 100K. Folks make wonderful claims about electric vehicles but when I routinely put on 400 miles in a day for business trips they wont work for me and given what I paid for it I would never break even with an electric.
I lucked out in that I bought a standard transmission (millennial antitheft device
). The automatic Fiestas were pretty notorious for reliability and the Sync ap built into the radio is poor but it works just well enough so that I can live with it. Ford needed to sell Fiestas so they could balance out the bad gas mileage of their trucks so this one was loaded with options. I can even put a roof rack on it and haul my 19 foot kayak on it.
I remember in the sixties and seventies and even eighties, 100K was an achievement. Pretty well all the major mechanical components started showing some significant wear around 60 to 80K and from them on it was usually having to budget car payment sized amounts in replacing or rebuilding major components and living with adventures of roadside breakdowns. Even at that point the cars were burning oil and when hitting a bump the parts all resonated at slightly different frequencies. If someone did hit 100K they made an event of it but usually it wasn't much longer before it made its way to the junkyard. Mechanical reliability in the late seventies and eighties started to get better with the exception of the early emission controls but up in New England it was rare for a body to make it more than 4 or 5 years before it was swiss cheese.
I will probably run it couple more years or until it get unreliable. At that point I can just give it away and it not owe me a thing. It probably will get replaced with Toyota unless Ford decides to start selling cars again.
I lucked out in that I bought a standard transmission (millennial antitheft device
). The automatic Fiestas were pretty notorious for reliability and the Sync ap built into the radio is poor but it works just well enough so that I can live with it. Ford needed to sell Fiestas so they could balance out the bad gas mileage of their trucks so this one was loaded with options. I can even put a roof rack on it and haul my 19 foot kayak on it. I remember in the sixties and seventies and even eighties, 100K was an achievement. Pretty well all the major mechanical components started showing some significant wear around 60 to 80K and from them on it was usually having to budget car payment sized amounts in replacing or rebuilding major components and living with adventures of roadside breakdowns. Even at that point the cars were burning oil and when hitting a bump the parts all resonated at slightly different frequencies. If someone did hit 100K they made an event of it but usually it wasn't much longer before it made its way to the junkyard. Mechanical reliability in the late seventies and eighties started to get better with the exception of the early emission controls but up in New England it was rare for a body to make it more than 4 or 5 years before it was swiss cheese.
I will probably run it couple more years or until it get unreliable. At that point I can just give it away and it not owe me a thing. It probably will get replaced with Toyota unless Ford decides to start selling cars again.
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