euromodder -
Quote:
Originally Posted by euromodder
When I started following this list, I was surprised at the number of people on it with quite old cars - no offense guys, I just think you're over-represented on this list when compared to the whole society.
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I would claim that the majority of forums are subsets of the population that skew in a specific direction. Hmmmmm, what is the average age of cars out there? :
Passenger vehicles in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quote:
Age of vehicles in operation
In the year 2001, the National Automobile Dealers Association conducted a study revealing the average age of vehicles in operation in the US. The study found that of vehicles in operation in the US, 38.3% were older than ten years, 22.3% were between seven and ten years old, 25.8% were between three and six years old and 13.5% were less than two years old. According to this study the majority of vehicles, 60.6%, of vehicles were older than seven years in 2001. This relatively high age of automobiles in the US might be explained by unaffordable prices for comparable new replacement vehicles and a corresponding gradual decline in sales figures since 1998. Also, many Americans own three or more vehicles. The low marginal cost of registering and insuring additional older vehicles means many vehicles that are rarely used are still given full weight in the statistics.
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I just did a quicky analysis of the Ecomodder Garage :
Code:
Total Cars = ~4100
Year Cars Running
Total % of Garage
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2010 58 58 1%
2009 133 191 5%
2008 189 380 9%
2007 183 563 14%
2006 203 766 19%
2005 175 941 23%
2004 138 1079 26%
2003 170 1249 30%
2002 184 1433 35%
2001 188 1621 40%
2000
or older 2479 60%
According to the 2001 data, about 40% of the cars in the garage *should* be older than 10 years. However, we have about 60%. That ain't all that bad.
I do think that what you are seeing is what I like to call the "MPG Rock Star" effect. The Honda VX, the CRX, and Geo Metro are all cars that are greater than 10 years old. The 1st Gen Honda Insight went out of production in 2006. I would claim that all of those cars are "over represented" here (for all the right reasons) as a percentage of the driving population.
I used to be a new-car-only person, but I've transitioned into preferring used cars. However, if my Saturn was crunched tomorrow, I don't know if I would go with new or used. It would depend on what kind of used car I could get my hands on.
CarloSW2