19th Jan 2018, 11:16

Probably. But I don't mean to deliberately cause arguments on this forum. In fact I still like this site better than many other reviews sites out there. Lots of good honest reviews.

Anyway, I was talking to a mechanic the other day, and he said older cars had their head gaskets go at any point beyond 100,000 miles due to the head gasket being cast iron and the block being aluminum, and the difference in temperature over time causes the seal to fail no matter how much preventive maintenance you do; that MAY be where the old thought that cars are automatically dead after a certain mileage came from. Of course, as I mentioned earlier on here, most modern cars (by modern I mean late 80s onwards, after fuel injection came about) had fully aluminum blocks and head gaskets, and other such things were less of a problem, but can still happen obviously.

The point I'm trying to make is no extreme ends of this argument are a good place to be. Obviously no car makes it 200,000 without a repair. Likewise, buying new does not automatically mean trouble free either; most people I know with new cars are back and forth to the dealers for small electronic problems and other recalls. You need to find a happy medium - I believe the best advice financially is a nearly new car that's been looked after.