If you have a car and you continue to fix it every time a problem occurs, why can’t you keep the car and drive it forever as-long as you have to money to fix it if something goes wrong?
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> If you have a car and you continue to fix it every time a problem occurs, why can’t you keep the car and drive it forever as-long as you have to money to fix it if something goes wrong?
You can.
Cars don’t magically vanish into the aether when the odometer ticks over to a specific number. If you ***WANT*** to keep repairing the car every time something goes wrong you can at least theoretically keep doing so indefinitely: If the engine wears out you can replace it (and if the engine you need isn’t available anymore you can convert it to one that’s in production). If the body is badly rusted you can remove/replace the panels. If the frame is rusted you can cut and weld in new frame elements.
At some point however this becomes *hideously expensive* – you can easily spend the price of a new car (or at least the annual payments on a loan) or more in major repairs to an old one over the course of a year.
At that point why continue to invest in repairing an old car which will inevitably have more mechanical and electrical failures in the future versus purchasing a new one where the components don’t have a decade of time and however many thousands of miles on them?
Most folks view their car from a utilitarian standpoint: You need it to get to/from work, haul groceries, get the kids to soccer practice, etc.
The amount of downtime constantly repairing an old car with lots of miles on it combined the the higher relative cost makes it more economical to replace the vehicle with one that doesn’t need as much maintenance/repair work.
In the “classic cars” community however it can often make sense to invest in the major repairs and retrofits required to keep a car running, either for economic reasons exhibiting the vehicle for prizes, or for sentimental reasons.
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