Just found out that my current car will die any day now due to a known defect. It’s out of warranty and I have no money to replace it right now.

I’ve been cursed with car problems my whole life, no matter how well I take care of them, I keep getting screwed.

All of the cars have been Fords because I always heard they were generally dependable and cheap to repair/upkeep, but so far they have all failed me.

What cars do y’all recommend? What cars do you have that just won’t give up the ghost no matter how old/beat up they get? If your life depended on your car lasting as long as possible, what car would you drive?

I want whatever car I get next to last me 10-20 years. I want to be that person posting a picture of the odometer hitting 300k miles. I also don’t care much about features, reliability is key.

  • @spiffy_spaceman
    link
    110 months ago

    Had a Honda that we sold after 16 or 17 years. It was not without problems, but it was cheap to fix and ran very well for it’s age. Have a Chevy Tahoe now (but any full size truck is comparable) that is going on the same record. Haven’t had to do anything outside of regular maintenance, runs great.

    Here’s the thing: don’t buy a really cheap car because those probably have problems and it will always be one thing after another. A big truck will run forever (I see dozens of 30+ year old trucks on the road) if you take care of it, but they’re sometimes expensive to fix and usually impractical if you don’t already need a truck. Any car you really take care of – and that means doing all the maintenance on time or early, sometimes whether it needs it or not – should last a long time. My Tahoe I take care of meticulously because it was very expensive, and that has paid off with stress-free ownership. Had a Jeep that was a pain in the ass every other month.

    You can Google for a list of the cars that will go past 200k. Most of them are Hondas and Toyotas, but some American cars are on the list too. If you can find someone who works for a car rental agency, they’ll tell you the cars that are always getting repaired and the ones that never do.