How long do you keep cars for?

[Dand E Lion]

Cliftonite said:

Current fleet: Austin 47 years, Honda 19 years, Daimler 18 years, Audi 17 years, Opel 1 week.

HTH!

:-)

Bit like that here, longest owned one was first acquired in 1971, then a couple or so every decade. Anything of interest is kept

[Pistonheader101]

2 years

[Deranged Rover]

I generally change my cars when I get bored and fancy a change.

Either that, or if my current car is one of my "between Range Rovers" sensible options, I change it when my finances have recovered enough from the ownership of the previous Range Rover to allow me to buy another one.

[ARHarh]

Kept a Morris minor for 21 years, had my series 2a Land Rover for 10 years. Often keep cars for 4 or 5 years, but since passing my test in 1981 i have bought at least 1 car every year sometimes more than 1. I have ended up with 7 cars at once before. Now I have calmed down and not bought a car for 5 years. Only have 3 cars now.

[Muddle238]

My first car is still in the family - I handed it down to my sister when she learnt to drive, who then handed it down to my parents when she upgraded a few years later. They plan to run it into the ground but I’ve got first refusal on it when they do eventually retire it from service, whenever that is. I think it’s been in the family for about 11 years now, so far.

Personally though, I suppose 4 years is the longest I’ve kept a car, that was my previous daily, however the final 18 months overlapped with my current daily, which took a majority of the driving duties and so the previous was sort of semi-retired after the first 2.5/3 years or so.

However the current daily along with one of the classics will cross the 4 year anniversary with me this winter, with no plans to get rid of either. The classic is a long term keeper, I hope to have it for the rest of my life.

[QuattroDave]

I've been driving 23 years and I'm on my 54th car so on average around 5 months a car! However for a lot of that I've had 2/3/4 cars at a time so I reckon average is around 12 months per car.

Longest I've owned a car out of those is 7 years (UR quattro) and shortest is around 4 days (ironically an Audi coupe GT!).

Boredom & wanting to drive pretty much every car drives the churn. However my current car S550 mustang GT I can see myself owning it for a long time (unless a mach1 or import GT350/500, there's a theme!).

[Fossilthe4x4]

Had my Landrover for 30 years, I can't decide whether I like it or not.

Daily's get changed when I get bored of them or when I get the feeling they are about to start getting expensive. Current daily is a Swift Sport which I've had for 3 years. I am ready for a a change but my circumstances make it sensible to keep for a bit longer.

[jamesbilluk]

I seem to change mine far to often..

[MrGTI6]

My main car I've had for just over four years now and intend on keeping it until the end of its serviceable life. My second car usually changes every month or two.

[tannhauser]

Until mine are scrap basically. I run older vehicles as modern cars really don’t do it for me. I really fancy a nearly new BMW to add to the fleet, but can’t find anything I like. And not at a reasonable price. Plus I’ll lament the loss of hydraulic steering, have to come to terms with augmented sound, addition of GPFs etc. But I guess you have to move with the times

[SturdyHSV]

Previous:

Clio ~ 14 years
GTV V6 ~ 9 years, was intending to sell it for about 5 of those years
C250TD ~ 11 months, bought for a stag do, sold some time after, was never going to pass another MOT
Brera V6 S ~ 2 months, swapped for the Ute
V70 D5 ~ 5 years

Current:

Monaro ~ 10.5 years and not going to sell it
Ute ~ 2 years, unlikely to sell it, many stupid plans for it
Commodore wagon ~ 10 months, very unlikely to sell it, not least because there's no others over here and prices in Aus have gone mental


Realistically, the Brera was a mistake, just not my sort of car, too refined and too uninteresting to drive, especially at 23mpg, and the Merc was bought for a stag do so was never going to be long term, so I'd say my average time is probably around 9 or 10 years, although I'm likely to be keeping the 3 Holdens indefinitely so that number will grow.

[Jaguar steve]

Providing they're not causing grief of threatening a big bill I'll keep cars as long as possible. Current XJ has been mine for 12 years.

Changing sucks time and money and almost invariably involves hassle.

[jamieduff1981]

I like variety but am not keen on spending money.

I tend to collect cars but only really dispose of them again when I really have to. I detest dealing with people. I dislike buying and selling in equal amounts. The cars I buy tend not to be worth a lot so usually there's not much pushing me to sell them again even when I get another one. I have plenty space here and no neighbours to make enemies with when they comment on how many I have like when I lived amongst other people.

The upshot of all this is I tend to keep cars a lot longer than most, and when one has plenty different sorts of cars to choose from, boredom isn't really an issue. Even if I get my income back up to 2014 pre-oil-price-crash levels, I just can't see me buying a new car ever again and certainly can't see me trading in every 12 months for a new depreciating asset. If I wanted to just deny myself over 500 quid a month for some temporary car to get bored of, I'd just do less work instead and use the extra time to work on bringing a classic car back to life.

[Galsia]

I've owned my Fiat Grande Punto since it was 18 months old. I've now had it for 11 years. I'd love to replace it with a new car but I cannot justify it. It is comfortable, reliable, cheap on fuel and would be worthless if I was to sell it or trade it in.

In those 11 years I've only done about 35k miles in it.

[SidewaysSi]

I have bought the "hero" cars I wanted as a kid so don't see many changes coming up.

Just modify them and drive them till they break. Then fix them as needed.

But I am a man who has just spent £2k on suspension on the Elise and have a £3k bill looming for suspension on the 911.

Ensuring they drive properly is key so don't mind a bit of expenditure to get them set up how I want them.

[jamieduff1981]

Galsia said:

I've owned my Fiat Grande Punto since it was 18 months old. I've now had it for 11 years. I'd love to replace it with a new car but I cannot justify it. It is comfortable, reliable, cheap on fuel and would be worthless if I was to sell it or trade it in.

In those 11 years I've only done about 35k miles in it.

I can understand this. The car is worth more to you as a functional asset than it's going to be worth to someone else as a financial purchase. My old 3.0 X-Type was bought a decade ago as a stop-gap but I'm in the same boat now. I'm not in love with the car and would happily exchange it but I've maintained it very well and there's so much new stuff on it to keep it driving the way I want it to that it's worth much more to me as a car I can trust than it would be worth to someone else buying it.

Or put another way, I'd have to spend several times what the car would fetch to buy a replacement that's likely to be in similar mechanical condition.

[SturdyHSV]

SidewaysSi said:

I have bought the "hero" cars I wanted as a kid so don't see many changes coming up.

Just modify them and drive them till they break. Then fix them as needed.

Agreed.

I'm slowly accumulating the cars I 'want', and will just modify / fix them over time.

If I get rid of a car, it's because I bought the wrong one in the first place which I try to avoid, although the Clio was a first car so couldn't be too heroic and the V70 was a matter of budget / necessity at the time. But by keeping those as long as needed, it's meant I've managed to mostly avoid buying the wrong cars too often.

The GTV I inherited from the gf at the time, I bought it for her but then it ended up being mine after a year or so and a large bill arrived...

[Nickbrapp]

Lease car 3 years. Won’t PCP a car because I know il get sucked into changing it earlier

Work vehicle is meant to be 5 years but so far I’ve changed every 6 months in the last 3 years due to, back pain, tax, can not big enough, hip pain, rental for hip pain, permanent auto will now be 5 years or 100k.

[Bungleaio]

Bungleaio said:

I change when I want to. My longest has been almost 10 years and counting, shortest was around 10 weeks. When I love a car I'll keep it for ages.

I had and impreza for almost 4 years and had no plans on changing it but I was forced to do when it was written off (by someone else crashing into me) and it took me a while to find something that I really liked again. So I went through a few cars keeping them for about a year each.

Currently got a golf GTI that I ordered new, it's got a 5 year warranty so I'm hoping to keep until the warranty runs out at least.

Hmm this didn't quite happen. 5 years from this post and I've had 3 more cars since then with another on order. Also had 4 bikes.

[SidewaysSi]

SturdyHSV said:

SidewaysSi said:

I have bought the "hero" cars I wanted as a kid so don't see many changes coming up.

Just modify them and drive them till they break. Then fix them as needed.

Agreed.

I'm slowly accumulating the cars I 'want', and will just modify / fix them over time.

If I get rid of a car, it's because I bought the wrong one in the first place which I try to avoid, although the Clio was a first car so couldn't be too heroic and the V70 was a matter of budget / necessity at the time. But by keeping those as long as needed, it's meant I've managed to mostly avoid buying the wrong cars too often.

The GTV I inherited from the gf at the time, I bought it for her but then it ended up being mine after a year or so and a large bill arrived...

Yep. I have not really had to buy a car with the head which is always a good thing. Even with a young family I have managed to keep my toys. Only the wife's Nissan Note is a car that I deem as replaceable and it's not worth that much anyway.