So the average age of the average car of the average American is now ten-plus years old. That describes my personal fleet of automobiles to a T. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason? I’m f*king poor.
Cars aren’t the pieces of garbage they once were, which helps. Engines easily make it past 150,000 miles and are incredibly tolerant of neglect. Body structures are strong, and you’re surrounded by airbags, your bacon is saved by ABS and stability control, and rust is nowhere near as common as it once was.
Great, but our flabby ‘Murkin backsides still squash the life out of seat foam, cretins in parking lots still assault unblemished bodywork with door dings (even when you’ve parked at the very farthest reaches of the lot), and every car has its own set of reliability foibles and wear items.
So while the age of our fleet can be taken to mean that cars have gotten significantly better, it may just mean that fewer people can cough up the monthlies for a new car. Hell, I bought my cars used, and I’m still paying one of them off. I’ll be done soon, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be turning around and replacing both my paid-for cars. It’d be nice, I’m tired of stuff wearing out, or just going completely haywire (a hidden dark side of increasingly sophisticated networked electronics), and generally, a change would be welcome. But the extra money I’d sink into a four-wheeled depreciation and liability machine would give me a little breathing room paying down my credit card, which gets used as an occasional high-interest bridge loan between paychecks. And even though it’s frustrating when things break, it’s more economical to keep fixing the old clunker.
Enough pity for me. Well, a little more would be okay, I’ll wallow for a while. My point is that while the fact that our cars are generally older than they’ve ever been, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we love the cars of 2002 the best. It just means that we’re still working for 2002 money, while expenses have been shot out of a funhouse cannon at the horizon of complete ridiculousness.
