Originally Posted by
Sixty Fiver
My last Nissan (an '89) went over 1,000,000 km / 663,000 miles and was a relatively trouble free car that never failed me, the current Nissan is a '93 and is much improved in quite a few aspects (engine layout and power is better) and it is just about at 250,000 km / 150,000 miles and runs great. It just gets regularly scheduled oil changes and cost of service over the past 20 years (I knew the previous owner) has been minimal and limited to wear items like brakes, tires, and most recently, the exhaust (muffler).
The Japanese really made domestic auto makers up their game when they offered cars that were reliable, economical, and required far less maintenance and their safety records were also much better.
German manufacturers too. By 1969 the VW bug was grossly inferior to the Japanese products being imported into the U.S. VW tried but had to abandon the effort by about 1976 since it couldn't meet the competition on any level, let alone meet EPA and DOT safety requirements.
Note my 2003 Nissan Sentra bought new (for cash FWIW) has just over 90,000 miles. It has received routine servicing at 30, 60 and 90 thousand miles, with an occasional oil change in between. New tires at about 50,000 miles. I expect the muffler may need replacing at some time after 10 years but so far it hasn't made a sound. The only other non routine expense that I spent any money on in 10 years was an after market CD player with an Aux input and capability of playing mp3 formatted CDs in order to listen to my downloaded audiobooks. I will pull the better player and install it in any replacement car which I don't expect for at least another 5 years or so.