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.
From the car side, it’s usually a matter of engineering and material quality. Good parts that are designed well will last a lot longer than something that’s cobbled together at minimal to make a profit
From the owner side it’s proper care and maintenance. Changing oil and filters, maintaining fluid levels, not physically abusing the car (not all cars a re dragsters and can’t handle “pedal to the metal” starts every time), and one a lot of people ignore is keeping it washed (prevents rust and allows you to see minor damage)
Most of the time it boils down to the parts. And how the original parts should be of the same quality as the spares.
Let’s use brakes as an example.
The brakes are a part of the car that *constantly get wear if you use the car*. And that *gets additional wear when you actually press the brake pedal.*
The constant wear is about rotation. When the brakes rotate, they have a minimal but constant wear.
And when you actually press the pedal, the wear depends on the weight of the car, the speed you are driving, and if you brake hard or gently.
Which means that how often you use the brakes sets the tone for how often you need to replace them.
How often you use them also depends on the type of car. (an automatic transmission car uses the brakes more) And driving habits. (drive like stinks, need to slow down abruptly more often than expected.)
All if this kind of sets the tone for something. Knowing what type of car it is and what type of driving habits you are expecting, you need to decide on the size of the brakes. Larger typically lasts longer. And when you have decided on the size, you get a material cost. And the material cost may convince you to go with smaller anyway because you are building a cheap car.
And like that it goes on and on and on with every single piece on the car. “Is this good enough?” Is it cheap enough?” “Can we get nearly as good quality for half the price?” “How much better IS twice as expensive, really?”
Every single piece of machinery on the car goes though those considerations. Cost is put against gain.
Safety is more important than reliability. Cost efficiency may be to go with the most reliable because it means it’ll never hav to be replaced.. Or put in cheap shit because barely anyone uses the cigarette lighter nowadays anyway.
Maybe you only technically need 5 screws to secure the entire dash board to the car. But it’ll start falling apart after 10 years. But you don’t expect anyone to keep the car that long, so you don’t care that good quality probably means that you should use 18 screws.
Most car owners give up on their car before it’s ten years old. Which means that to please the original owner of the car, you don’t have to care beyond that. And actually, most original owners replace their car after 3 or 5 years, so if you want to please them you really don’t have to look beyond 3 or five years of excellent quality. After that, it’s kind of okay to let the car cost absurd money to the new owner.
It’s a weird business.
In terms of engine shape, I’ve got a Toyota landcruiser fj80 with almost 250000 miles on it. Part of the reason it’s lasted so long is because it’s using an online 6 I stead of a v-shaped engine. Inline engines tend to have less engine vi ration and it makes them last longer. V-shaped engines require a lot of engineering to balance them to keep them from vibrating so much. There’s a science garage video you could watch on inline 6 vs v6.
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