I bought it in 2006 with 35,000 miles on it. I work at home, so don't have to put many miles on it and it still was under 70,00 miles when it died after 12 years. The transmission would not go out of low gear. Told it would probably be over 2000 to get it fixed, which was really not worth it, so I bit the bullet and got a 2015 Nissan Versa, but I sure wished I still did not have that car payment.

A vehicle ‘s transmission should last more than 70,000 miles!

But, we had 3 Chrysler mini vans in the 90s.... you were lucky to get 40,000 out of one of those trannies. On one, we replaced the tranny 3 times. It had 275,000 miles on it when it was finally un-repairable and we had to junk it.

Not so sure these new computers are so great in this case. They said they had to put in the new computer systema and then reprogram everything.

I recently traded in my 2004 Honda civic that had just under 150,000 miles on it mainly because I was jonesing for a newer car. So I bought a 2017 Honda Fit.

I hate to point it out, but overall the Japanese cars are vastly more reliable than the American ones, no matter where they are made.

More to the point, do some serious online research about specific makes and models of cars and how reliable they are. For $3500-4000 you should actually be able to get something decent. Just check out seven ways from Sunday just how good that car, or kind of car, should be.

An enormous amount can be found on the internet.

It had been wrecked 4 times and repaired. I sold it to a co-worker as a car for her daughter. They put another 150K miles on it and it was wrecked 5 more times and repaired.

In accidents, needed repair, but your essential point that it was almost impossible to kill, despite many clear attempts to do so is valid.

Mine has 125,000 miles on it and it still runs and drives like new. Because I do a lot of highway driving, I'm hoping to get 300,000 miles out of mine. It should at least get 250,000 before I need an engine or a transmission as long as I take care of it.

I'll surely research the model when my wife picks out what she wants. It's not like I don't have a say in the matter. But I don't want to force something on her that she won't like. I don't want this to be a source of resentment for her. I think for the most part you should be able to get 200,000 miles or 15 years out of just about any newer vehicle now days if you take care of them.

Emissions requirements have forced many, if not most, car manufacturers to adopt direct fuel injection in the last 10 years or so. DI has it's own set of problems and some owners aren't getting to 60K miles.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/02/pros-and-cons-of-direct-injection-engines/index.htm

The article says the DI engines are more of a luxury or high end option. That ain't us!

But I've seen those kinds of engines they are talking about- like small 1.3 liter deals with a turbo charger. I'll know to stay away from those now. Thanks.

The reason they are characterizing it that way is because higher end cars typically get new engine technology first and those same engines eventually work their way down the food chain. Now that DI has been around for a while, it's pretty ubiquitous.

Some engine designs are more prone to problems than others. The problem is that with direct injecting into the cylinders, you no longer have the gasoline detergents washing the PCV residue downstream, so the valves eventually clog up with what comes out of the crankcase gases. Some manufacturers have employed strategies that still direct enough gasoline into the throttle body to clean the valves. Others have cleaned up the PCV system.

The advantage to DI is it allows for drastically reduced emissions at no cost to performance.

I'm pretty sure newer designs will deal with the defects, and some already seem to have few if any issues compared to non-DI designs. However, I do know many people are eventually dealing with poor performance and a check engine light only to discover their valves are trashed and the repair is extremely expensive. All of my cars now specify much higher grade synthetic oil because of this, and I go a bit beyond this with even more expensive oil. Previously you could get by with much cheaper oil and expect no issues so long as it was changed at prescribed intervals.

some brands simply aren't as good as others.

A pretty good source is also Consumer Reports. Tom and Ray Magliozzi used to have a website that had a section for Q&A about cars, but I can't seem to find that website. It may have been taken down since Tom died and the reruns of the show went completely off the air.

My 2006 Scion (Toyota) xB is still putting along. Toyotas just last forever and rarely need anything other than scheduled maintenance. Subarus are good too.

I will also recommend Subaru's, but they tend to be more expensive, and for some reason the Subaru Gods do not like me. The two times I've owned one something bad has happened by 100,000 miles.

and they are very well maintained. They usually flip them after they have about 50K miles, so they're recent models too - 2016s and 2017s.