Hi friends.

On the subject of cars I see many posts here on Club Lexus.

Sometimes I will hear people say, "I'm waiting on the new model because the current model looks dated".
Other prefer to buy used in the 3-5 year range, still newer but not what many would consider old- but some may.

Then others look for cars in a certain price range such as $10k-$20K which may be getting to the 8-20 year range depending on the model and desirability.

When I was a young man I traded cars every year to 3 years always looking for something different or newer, plus I drove a LOT of miles.
Now as I'm getting older I really don't think about that stuff anymore.

My current car is a 2004 RX330 and since I do very little driving and I'm not made of money, I have very little incentive to by new.

Just a fun poll to see what ya'll think is 'OLD' for a car.

Poll: How old is 'old'

1-2 years
3-5 years
5-10 years
10-20 years



 

10+ is old, like my wife RAV4, but my 2013 GS is still "new" to me because it is hard to get comparable quality car to replace it.

 

Well, these things are relative and are not necessarily absolute. A 10 year old vehicle from one manufacturer may be considerably more up-to-date (relative to the current market) than one from another which may have been somewhat "dated" upon release. One thing is certain, and that's the reality that the pace of change continues to accelerate as technology and innovation cycles shorten. The inevitable consequence of this is that vehicles will begin to date/deprecate sooner than they once did because the cutting edge of the market is moving faster.

Whether that matters is up to the individual, just as it has always been.

 

cars are becoming software first, so unless one's car can be updated, it's going to quickly become 'old'.

 

I prefer old tech from 2010s rather new crap from 2020s.

For example - new cars don’t allow you to rev the engine even in Neutral.
Everything is connected to a stupid app.
If door is slightly open - car will not drive forward which to me is a safety risk. Imagine someone is trying to car jack you, you can’t even drive away if they opened the door.

Many other things that annoy me about the new tech.

 

Entirely depends on what you are doing....

For repair/diag pre 1996 is old
For safety pre 2012 is old
For power that depends on your goal...

There is also a very real difference between mainstream cars and high end cars, 10 year old high ends are still far more advanced and capable than brand new mainstream/premium cars.

Also for example I see zero difference between a 07 LS460 and a 2017 since they have the same suspension, trans, engine, and structure so in my mind all of them are the same age since the actual car is unchanged. When the car is actually redesigned from the ground up I consider that the "new" one, anything else is just a tacked on change.

Tech and software is the most useless metric of new or not, it doesn't change what the car actually is. You can also add on the latest and greatest tech you want to a 1960s car no problem so it has no bearing on what a cars age is to me. I've fitted enough 360 cams, CarPlay, etc to older 90s/2000s cars that new tech is meaningless to me since it's just a head unit swap.

Actual high tech like advanced lighting, radar crash detection, thermal, eye tracking, etc are only on high end cars to begin with and even 10 year old ones have all these systems and more that you still don't see on new premium tier cars. That more a matter of high end vs normal though....

There is also the fact the same systems work differently on various tiers of car, adaptive cruise on a cheap car isn't the same as in a high end.

Old is whatever doesn't meet your goal and in some cases 1 year is old. I don't consider my Jeep old yet since it does its job well, the only part of it that concerns me is crash performance and that is likely what will lead to its replacement. Everything else is perfectly acceptable for its job.

 

Code all of that out if you drive German. Day one I disabled the open door/park shift, no rev limiter, and no reminder chimes etc....same thing with GPS connective stuff, disable it if you don't want it. I like being able to move my cars around with the door open and the A8s don't normally allow that, now they do so when I'm detailing or micro adjusting their position I don't have to rely on the 360 cams.

You can do it on Lexus as well if you know how, my 07 allows free revs and has no stupid warning systems enabled and even allows two pedal driving.

The issue is when they brick the car when you disable data services......I refuse to "own" anything I'm not in total control over.

 

I refer to think, not in terms of new vs. old, but in terms of the way I think vehicles should be designed. There are a number of automotive features that I think should have been kept that were dropped years ago (thermoplastic body panels, spin-off transmission filters, standard NOAA weather-radio, hood ornaments, whitewall tires, a wide choice of paint colors and two-tones, pull-down child-seats, real spare tires, hood-springs, etc.... There are also a number of features today, not available years ago, that I'm glad we now have.....Rear Traffic Cross-Alert, Lane-Change Warning, Back-up Warnings, 360-camera view from above, button for FWD/AWD activation/deactivation, satellite radio, USB-port, 120V outlets, etc....

 

I already know my car is old so I just went ahead and voted for the 10-20 year old choice. lol

I'm enjoying hearing everyone's ideas.

 

I start thinking of a car as old somewhere in the 5-10 year old range. Its not 5 years, but its not as old as 10 years...maybe 6-7 years.

 

Objectively you can measure age with a calendar, but the consumer will realize that a car is old when it has aged to the point when it can no longer keep up with the competitors in its class.

 

I grew up in a family that drove 10-20 year old cars so lmao.

My truck was 2 years old when I bought it. It's now 8 years old. I'll probably keep it for many more years because it still works flawlessly.

 

Age is probably not a good measure.

Condition is. You can have 2 cars of the same age. One you want to push off the Cliff and the other you still want to detail and polish.

 

10+ years. I had my 99 RX300 from January 2002 until January 2020, but my RX was at almost 10 years old when I came back from Mexico in April 2008 and I could definitely noticed the shortcomings after being 6.5 years in Mexico with the rest of the market. My father had a 1979 Chevrolet Nova that lasted until late 1989 and my father came to the conclusion one day just before he bought his second Jaguar, that the Nova was old.

You want to get really old, we had a 1987 190E that we bought in 1991 used from a friend and later my dad bough a 1993 190E in late 1992, both vehicles lasted almost 20 years each.

 

I used to always buy used cars, often with over 100k miles on them, and enjoy them. At the time, they didn't really feel "old" to me, but now I am sure they would.

Then I got used to leasing, so I never had anything old. I enjoyed that, but eventually got tired of it and now all of my cars are purchased.

My oldest car, the Highlander, is now about 4, but with only 15k miles on it, it doesn't feel old. Dated? Yeah, a bit, but not old.

Next is the GS. A bit behind on tech, but at almost 3 years old and at 4k miles, it still feels new to me.

The Tundra is 2 years old this month, but far more dated than my other two cars. I don't care though. I love it. I'm at 10k miles and it will surely pass up the Highlander in the next year or so. I'll likely keep the Tundra until it is surely "old" by most measures.