Not counting accidents, what is the average life of a new car or pickup truck?

If you keep the damn kids out of it and away from it, maybe 25 years. (Paved road use.)

I’d say an average of 15 years to junkyard. It can really vary though. Depends on how much it is driven, the climate, how well maintained it is.

My husband has a 1983 Porsche, but the engine has been rebuilt.

It seems that the answer should be a general function of total mileage, and since I can get 200,000 miles out of a car these days without extraordinary effort, it seems like 20 years (at 10,000 miles per year, if that’s anywhere near ‘average’) is not hard to achieve.

But that’s a passenger vehicle used on paved road, as @kritiper notes, and with responsible “adult” use. Pickup trucks used in industry or commerce have a much harder life; the pickups that we sometimes buy for use on construction sites are sold after the project ends for little more than the salvage value, and those buyers tend to use them on farms and hunting land, more rough use. They may not see the odometer turn even once. On the other hand, with only occasional rough use of not too many miles, they may last for decades, too.

The “electronic, computer garbage” that you seem to decry doesn’t age vehicles; in many cases it helps to alert drivers and owners to maintenance issues before they become engine killers. Automotive computers tend to be pretty robust, I think.

3 out of the last 4 cars, I’ve owned, lasted over 280,000 miles and more than 13 years.

@CWOTUS For being pretty robust we have had to replace the one in the wifes truck twice at a price of a $1000.
in the last 10 years I have had 3 die on a 3 different big trucks at a cost of $3500 each sorry if I don’t share your enthusiasm for vehicle computers.
AS the vehicle ages it seems the electronics crap out long before anything mechanical does.

@SQUEEKY2 Agreed, and in my experience, diagnostic computers seem to work very well at alerting drivers to issues they would have figured out through different clues anyway – but it takes a “whisperer” to infer the types of problems we really need help identifying. I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked up issues on forums, only to find multiple people saying “my dealer can’t even figure out what the problem is – they’re hoping it will be solved by replacing/reprogramming the computer”. What is that worth?

@dappled_leaves LOTS$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Highly variable. My wife’s car is a low-mileage (~100k) ‘98 while my last car, an ‘85 Corolla, was running strong at 253k.

That said, the newer cars tend to malfunction in arcane and expensive ways, and be engineered at the lowest cost-per-unit possible even if that 37 cents a car they save winds up turning into a massive recall and/or a few multi-million-dollar wrongful death lawsuits while older cars tended to be overengineered enough to tolerate a little abuse. By “abuse” I mean “able to go 3100 miles between oil changes without dying” and “can spin the tires a little bit in winter driving without sending pieces of the differential through the bell housing in the transmission”.

What I am trying to get at, while the computer does a fine job at it’s peak, it and the sensors it depends on are very costly and at certain age seem to need more maintenance than anything mechanical on the vehicle,thus in my opinion greatly affecting the over all life of the vehicle.

I agree that computers and sensors have a life cycle with limited age. But I have a 3.5 liter engine in my car that has 365 HP and gets 28 MPG at 70 MPH. To get 360+ HP in the analog (distributor, carburetor and fixed valve timing) you need about 7 liters and get 11 to 14 MPG.

I have a six year old Civic that I bought brand new, and now has over 200,000 miles on it. Not a major problem yet, knock on wood. I used to own Nissans, also bought brand new, and as soon as they’d hit 75k the diagnostic lights would come on which meant bring this car to the dealer and the dealer will say they are not sure what exactly the issues is without some bucks being spent. Other family members who owned Nissan experienced the same thing.

This year I was considering replacing the Civic, but as it is still going strong, my new plan is next year, end of calendar year, unless something major happens in the interim. I will, of course, be replacing it with a Honda as I am now what I call a “Honda Convert.”

Well, if they are new, how can we figure it out? How new do you mean? I am not wild about the computers, I have thought a few times about finding a well restored classic. I have often dreamed of having a ‘57 Belair.

@Here2_4 I would love to get a fully restored 71 Dodge power wagon toughest truck I have ever seen.