Highway vs. City

OK. So you have come this far into my site (and my brain) which means you are a real car person who loves to absorb in-depth, little known but still incredible valuable information. Welcome.

Hwy vs. City is a topic I like to discuss with clients as we drive to inspect a car for them.

Here is how it goes:

Imagine Bob gets in his car in the morning and drives one hour on the freeway to work (50 miles). His total commute that day is 100 miles five days a week. That is 500 miles a week or about 2000 per month or about 24,000 per year. That is a lot of freeway driving.

Now lets compare his neighbor Tina, who has the exact same car as Bob, in fact bought it the same day as Bob but she got a cool job much closer to her house. Her commute is half of Bob's; 25 miles one way or 50 per day, 250 per week or about 1000 per month and finally 12,000 miles per year. The difference is that she takes mostly side roads to get to her work. Lot's of stop and go.

Now, both Bob and Tina started their cars the same amount of times, ran cold starts an equal amount of time, (this, by the way is when most wear and tear occurs inside the engine), ate in their cars the same amount of time. The big difference is Bob ran his engine at its' most efficient speed the entire time and used his transmission very little while he cruised down the road effortlessly clicking the big miles on his car. Bob had his car serviced regularly.

Tina meanwhile is commuting through a daily grind of starts and stops, every mechanical component on her car is getting punished way more than Bob's car. Of course engine and transmission are working overtime, but let's not forget her brakes, calipers, belts, pulley's, vital fluids and not the least, little things, like turn signals and visors were getting their daily abuse. Her air conditioner too had to work at less than optimal engine speed which would have put unwarranted stress on both the a/c and the engine. She also will have maybe hit an odd pothole here or there putting severe loads on the suspension. Her tires wore down quicker as well with all that additional friction being called upon to get her 4000 pound car to start and stop. Tina also had her car serviced regularly.

Now then. After a short 5 years later let's look at the results:

Bob has 120,000 easy miles on his car. Sounds like alot, but in view of his driving habits it is interesting to compare with Tina who has 60,000 gruelling miles on the odometer. When they sell their cars they both put it on the market for the market value. But wait, Bob has to drastically reduce his price by a large margin due to the mileage.

I come to look at both cars. Hmm. Both cars look about the same. The only problem I see with Bob's car, other than all those miles, is that it has some small tiny gravel specks on the front hood from freeway driving. Tina's car however has a few scratches on the bumper corners that Bob's car does not have, so that is a toss up. Both of those indicators confirm the usage of the car for me. Gravel specks = Highway; Bumper scratches = City

Without a doubt I go for Bob's car. It is not even debatable. I not only bought the superior car, but I paid far less than the poor sot who passed on buying Bob's car because of the mileage and went for Tina's car with the "low" miles. Bob's car, even with the miles, is a more youthful car and just plain a much better value.

In the end Tina's car will have big ticket items like the engine and transmission fail before Bob's. But just as important, all the stressed components will have started their journey into that built-in obsolescence world far earlier than anyone would have realized.

Funny how that goes in the car world; If you know what you are doing, you will have good luck with cars your entire life. The person who bought Tina's car will have no such luck.

As a side note I do not want to diminish the value of a well cared for "low mileage" vehicle. My point above is to emphasize just how critical highway miles are to the ratio of total miles driven.