If you take care of a car and properly maintain it then it will last a long time. I drove a Chevy Cavalier for several years. Bought it with 96K and sold it at 145k for $100 less than I paid for it. The only maintenace I did was routine stuff such as oil changes, brakes, coolant flushes, transaxle fluid flush, fuel filter, tune-up and replaced a leaky valve cover gasket. All told not too bad for a car that got 35 mpg on the highway.
Granted there are a few cars that are just bad to begin with, who knows maybe they were Monday cars when the workers were hung over from a hard weekend partying. but over all all of the GM adn Ford cars that me and my family have owned have supprisingly been lees of a maintenace problem than some of the JApaneese cars we all have owned.
It basically all comes down to how hard to you drive, and how well do you maintian the car. Follow the general rule of if you take care of your car, it will take care of you. Now Iwill say that I used to drive a late 80's Dodge that was truly a POS.
Granted there are a few cars that are just bad to begin with, who knows maybe they were Monday cars when the workers were hung over from a hard weekend partying. but over all all of the GM adn Ford cars that me and my family have owned have supprisingly been lees of a maintenace problem than some of the JApaneese cars we all have owned.
It basically all comes down to how hard to you drive, and how well do you maintian the car. Follow the general rule of if you take care of your car, it will take care of you. Now Iwill say that I used to drive a late 80's Dodge that was truly a POS.