{"id":5917,"date":"2012-03-22T12:35:08","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T18:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=5917"},"modified":"2012-03-22T11:16:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T17:16:35","slug":"elegy-for-a-car-that-kept-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/03\/22\/elegy-for-a-car-that-kept-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Elegy For A Car That Kept Running"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

When StateImpact reporter Molly Messick traded in her old Toyota last fall, it had racked up more than 260,000 miles.<\/p><\/div>\n

Until recently, my car was a 1994 Toyota Camry that my parents purchased second-hand when I was in high school.\u00a0 By the time I was finished with it, its odometer had passed the 260,000 mile mark.\u00a0 It had been broken into in D.C. and held its own on rutted out back roads all over Wyoming.\u00a0 I probably would have kept driving it, had it not been for a couple of expensive repairs on the horizon.<\/p>\n

All of that is to say that when I read this recent New York Times<\/em> article<\/a> that declares 200,000 miles the new 100,000, it touched a chord.\u00a0 “[T]oday, as more owners drive their vehicles farther,” the article says, “some are learning that the imagined limits of vehicular endurance may not be real limits at all.” A primary motivation for keeping cars longer is, of course, the economic climate.\u00a0 Frugality’s effects on the used car market have also been widely reported.\u00a0 This story<\/a> from The Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, which points out that it is now sometimes cheaper to buy new than used, is only one of several recent examples.<\/p>\n

As the New York Times<\/em> piece points out, underlying all of this is the fact that cars are simply better than they used to be.\u00a0 The story<\/a> quotes Jagadish Sorab, of Ford Motor.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifteen years ago, piston rings would show perhaps 50 microns of wear over the useful life of a vehicle,\u201d Mr. Sorab said, referring to the engine part responsible for sealing combustion in the cylinder. \u201cToday, it is less than 10 microns. As a benchmark, a human hair is 200 microns thick.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaterials are much better,\u201d Mr. Sorab continued. \u201cWe can use very durable, diamondlike carbon finishes to prevent wear. We have tested our newest breed of EcoBoost engines, in our F-150 pickup, for 250,000 miles. When we tear the engines down, we cannot see any evidence of wear.\u201d – The New York Times<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No doubt about it, my Toyota was built to last.\u00a0 But it was simple sentiment — and sure, thriftiness — that made me hold on for so long.\u00a0 When I cleaned it out before trading it in last fall, I found mix tapes made for me by friends in high school.\u00a0 I unloaded my camping gear, and reminisced about nights spent counting shooting stars.\u00a0 When I handed over the keys at the car dealership later that afternoon, they knocked $300 off the price of my new Subaru.\u00a0 It didn’t seem like nearly enough.<\/p>\n

Surely you readers out there have old car stories of your own.\u00a0 We’d love to hear them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until recently, my car was a 1994 Toyota Camry that my parents purchased second-hand when I was in high school.\u00a0 By the time I was finished with it, its odometer had passed the 260,000 mile mark.\u00a0 It had been broken into in D.C. and held its own on rutted out back roads all over Wyoming.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[68,46],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}