On Reddit you always see people saying that old Toyotas are unkillable, or that Lexuses (Lexi?) have a really long life span.
I understand that different cars have different engines and parts, but why should a 1991 Camry have a longer lifespan than my 2013 Fiat Panda?
Besides, there isn’t a different engine on each distinct car make, is it?
Also, I was often told that cars tend to break after 200,000 km. But some guys manage to pull records like the “million miles Lexus” while some cars catch on fire at 30,000km.
Last point: sports car. I often read that people don’t use them not to get miles on the odometer. Do they have a shorter lifespan?
In: Engineering
Wear and tear on parts. A piston will slide up and down (or side to side) in a cylinder many times over your car’s life. Belts will rotate millions of times, spark plugs will spark, drivetrains will spin, and so much more.
Every moving part is an opportunity to break. The chance is very small, but over the lifetime of the car, it compounds.
Engineering a car you can reduce those odds quite a bit. However, when you actually build it, not everything will be perfectly 100% identical.
Building tolerances will allow parts within an acceptable level of error to be used. Those tolerances may affect the expected life of the car a tiny bit each.
Depending on how closely each car was built, how well designed the original engineering was, and the grade of the materials used to build your car, you can end up with very large or very small ranges for expected life of the car between an above and below average sample.
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