Safe Speed Forums

I'd be interested to see some figures. As far as I was aware, the average lifespan of a car in the UK has gone UP from about 12 years to nearer 14 in the last 20 years or so. Also I've no experience ofservicing costs but the 15% sounds like it came from somewhere. What's the story there?

As for the others not needing to be traded off. What makes you say that?

All these improvements in materials, design, engineering, corrosion protection, build quality, Lubrication technology and so on (all of which is true) and they only last an extra two years!

And that compared to an era when cars were only scrapped when they physically fell to bits! (which is the one thing that simply doesn happen nowadays)

M'Lud, I rest my case!

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Sorry, but that document strikes me as being more of an exercise in political hand-wringing than a serious analysis of motoring costs. The two things that immediately spring out of the page are firstly that it is a one year snapshot taken at the onset of a year of spiralling costs generally; the second is the tiny sample size.

It gives us no idea of how much of the alleged increase in maintenance costs is due to the causes you espouse; and how much perhaps due to the fact that in a time of recession the people in the sample are keeping their cars longer.

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Mole asked for figures, and there they are. If major motoring organisations supported your views, you'd be all for it! So don't be sorry, I get the picture.



Maintenance costs have gone up (for some reason). Of course, we all want them to cost less and car dealers want to charge more - it's just common sense.

Almost, but does it have a decent heater?

They are moving at a snail's pace because (a) marketing trumps engineering and (b) each maker is duplicating the work of every other.

I'm not particularly disputing the veracity of the figures, more their significance in terms of supporting your hypothesis.

They show a massive increase in maintenance costs; but not only is this of a statistically insignificant sample size but it spans a short period of time when the cost of virtually everything has gone through the roof.

I've read enough "statistics" from our friends in the scamera partnerships to be able to spot fallacial data when I see it!

Furthermore the evidence doesn't support my own experience. I suspect if you could get hold of some proper data, ie for say 100,000 similar vehicles over a 5 or 10 year period, index linked to RPI, you'd see a dramatically different result.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
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It means that we can have our cake, and eat it. Those attributes can be obtained in
addition to ease of maintenance, not instead of ease of maintenance.

Look at the methodology, JT. Maintenance is trended over three years!

M'Lud, I rest my case!

What does that mean in practice?

It means that the after sample is the same as the before sample, but with the 2005 value replaced by the atypically inflated 2008 value.

In effect it still represents a one year "blip".

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
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No. It is smoothed over three years in order to to mitigate "blips". If anything, the annual change was MUCH more than 19% at the end of the period.

No.
From the data quoted, all you can deduce is that the 2008 figure was higher than the 2005 figure, (presumably) by 3 times the annual increase quoted. In order to draw the conclusion you have you would need access to all the annual figures.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
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Sorry, JT, but that should read ! Of course, you are free to imagine strange, fluctuating, inexplicable variations in the intervening years. Or you could just say that it going up fast, as I said at the start. Let's keep things simple.

Now, would you like to present some evidence that makers are not increasing maintenance costs? Or are you prepared to yield now?

Don't tell me what my words should be!

Why don't you just read the whole bloody sentence, instead of taking my words out of context?

I didn't need your word "MUCH" as it would have been entirely superfluous, given that the remainder of the sentence quantified the increase precisely.

Far from imagining "strange, fluctuating, inexplicable variations" the point I was making was that the quoted statistic was based on the same data from the intervening years, and that using a "3 year rolling" increase and using it as a yearly snapshot is statistically misleading, as all you are really doing is comparing the data with that from 3 years ago, the intervening years effectively drop out of the equation.

However, given your apparent lack of basic English comprehension skills, I'd hardly expect you to grasp something as complex as that statistical anomaly.

Or were you being deliberately obtuse for dramatic effect?

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Sorry, JT. I was slipping back to my old ways, there. I was feeling the pressure...

Anyway, look, Let's try and get back on track. I mean, look, those car makers are good bunch of fellows, and they're doing their best, of course. Everybody has to make a living, and they've chosen a pretty tough job, so they deserve to make a profit.

But: nobody gets a free lunch. What I mean, I guess, is that when buyers are aware of their tricks, makers have to "raise their game", so to speak. We get what we expect to get, as Mole says. If it is true that maintenance costs are on their way up (and I've given some reasonable evidence that they are) then it's right to knock them down again, if we can. That's what business is about - it takes two to tango, so to speak. So, in short, we've rumbled what they are up to, and now we want to fix it. It'll be good for everybody.

To be honest, I think that's pretty damned good! A bit better than Abercrombie's claimed 15% in fact! My feeling , in fact, is that if new cars cost the same percentage of a household's annual ncome now as they did 30 years ago, they'd last even longer! The best way to get people to make their cars last longer is to charge more for new ones! You've said it yourself, I think. The scrappers of 20 years ago were full of cars that were just heaps of unsalvageable rust. Nowadays they're full of perfectly viable cars. I happen to think that's great because I HATE welding up rusty cars but am happy to plug in "black boxes" all day long until they go again!

Ask yourself. All these improvements in materials, design, engineering, corrosion protection, build quality, Lubrication technology and so on...

...would they have happened if the industry had been lumbered with Abercrombie's enforced standardisation and "open design" policies?

I think you and JT have probably had this out by now to be honest. I had a quick look but I can't tell anything meaningful from what's written. It seemed to me that the biggest single hike was in fueling costs - in which case, we need to go back to the thirstier cars of yesteryear like we need a dose of the clap! As for the cost of maintenance rising, I'd need a lot more data than just that headline figure. It seems to suggest that the cost had gone up 19% betwen 2007 and 2008 and then mentioned something about a three year period that, frankly, I didn't even understand! Befre I accepted that it was anything to do with car design, I'd need to know that (for example) it wasn't largely just due to inflation of labour costs.

In any case, comparing it over such a short time interval is meaningless in the contect of what (I believe) we're debating. If I understand you correctly, you feel that we nee to go back to where we were about 20 years ago? Looking at a 1 year change in costs (albeit with a bit of 3 year averaging) isn't going to tell us anything meaningful. For a start, these are likely to be the same cars in 3 years and they're CERTAINLY going to be much the same designs!

Look at it this way:

My company car is a Peugeot 807 diesel. It needs an oil and filter change every 20,000 miles. The filter costs haven't changed much in 20 years (I think they've gone down, in real terms, in fact)! The oil cost has risen though. How often would you have had to do the same job on a diesel of 20 years ago? 3000 miles? 9000 at best?

It comes with a 3 year / 60,000 mile warranty. Would I have got that 20 years ago?

20 years ago, in fact, I'd have been paying for various bits to be GREASED on some cars!

Why not? If parts were standardised the only way for a manufacturer to distinguish his product is to improve the performance. The easy option of spurious cosmetic changes is precluded.

And standardisation and "open design" has hardly stifled innovation in the personal computer industry

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

It was 19%, actually, in one year.



Why use household income? More families have two incomes now. When you compare to the retail price index, there is no change since 1987.



No. Less gadgets, less single point failures and less electronic crap equal more durability AND lower prices – a double winner! Less is more, in this case, Mole.