Why I’m Totally Comfortable Buying Modern Used Cars With Over 100,000 Miles

The first car I ever bought was a 1973 Audi Fox (Audi 80 to the non-Americans in the crowd), which I purchased in 1982. It had 95,000 miles on the clock, and while the car was in good shape, it needed a lot of work mechanically. I ended up replacing all the various rubber components like hoses, belts, bushings, etc. and soon after rebuilt the motor as well. I replaced wheel bearings, brakes, and tires. Basically, every part that could wear out, was worn out and was replaced.

A few years later, I bought the 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo that I still own. It, too, had 95,000 miles on the clock and, yes, it, too, was completely worn out. Everything needed to be replaced before the car would be useable including a complete rebuild of the motor and transmission.

Fast-forward to 2024, and my 2019 Ford F-150 has just crossed 100,000 miles. The truck looks and feels like it just came off the showroom floor. The suspension is still tight, the engine runs like new, and the upholstery, while it has one or two marks on it, looks otherwise perfect.

Based on this experience, and talking to other people, I do have ask myself this question: Does mileage in a used car still matter like it did before? Clearly a car with 100,000 miles in 1982 is a completely different case compared with a car with 100,000 miles today. But does that mean mileage just doesn’t matter like before or have the goal post just moved? Is the 100,000 mile car from 1982 the 200,000 mile car today? Or 300,000 miles? Where is the limit now?

To help understand this, we need to talk about what has changed in the 40-50 years between those first cars I bought and my F-150. I believe the answer can be summed up in three words: “Customer Expectations.” And Toyota.

Toyota

Let’s start with Toyota, because understanding the impact of this company will explain the other two words.

When I first started out in the auto industry in 1990, cars were routinely tested and designed to last 100,000 miles or 10 years. We would run durability tests, which were designed to simulate customer usage and environmental impacts, and at the end of the tests when the cars had accumulated the equivalent of 100,000 customer miles and 10 years of service the cars needed to be “functional”.

In order to make sure our tests would indeed produce a competitive product, we would periodically run competitive cars as well. The results were always interesting, but one thing that stood out was that no matter how many times we ran these tests, Toyota cars always finished best. They would break less often and would perform better at the end of the tests than our cars. They were far more than just “functional” at 100,000 miles. They quickly became the benchmark for how to design cars for durability and long-life.

Of course, this didn’t happen by accident. Durability and long life have been hallmarks of Toyota cars for decades and it goes back to the early days of the company and the rebuilding of Japan after World War II.

Rebuilding Japan

Shortly after WWII ended, General Douglas MacArthur was tasked with taking a census of the Japanese people. Frustrated by his inability to complete the task in a war-torn country, MacArthur brought in a man named W. Edwards Deming to help out. Deming had over the years taken to the work of Walter A. Shewhart in statistical process control and applied it to both manufacturing as well as managerial processes. These methods emphasized the use of statistics to control the processes of making things. The theory being that if you control the process, then you control the outcome of that process.

If you control HOW a part is made, then you control the part itself. Nowadays, this is pretty much how all manufacturing is done, but in those days, the idea was revolutionary. At the time, manufacturers preferred to use inspectors to check parts after they were made and reject those that didn’t meet specifications. This would often result in a lot of scrap and wasted money. It also led to a lot of yelling and telling line workers they weren’t doing a good enough job. But that was the way things were done back then, and some American manufacturers were reluctant to change.

When Deming came to Japan to work on the census, on the other hand, he found fertile ground for his ideas and soon became the most influential person in Japanese manufacturing. Toyota especially took note of his ideas and developed what has become the world’s standard for manufacturing — specifically quality and process control. In 1949 Toyota introduced its Statistical Quality Control (SQC) process, and steadily built on this, turning it into the famed Total Quality Management process still in use today. But Toyota didn’t just use Deming’s ideas to help their manufacturing, they also used them to improve their management. Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, Chairman and former President (1982-1999) of Toyota is quoted as saying “Every day I think about what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our management.”

Deming was so influential that in 1951, the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) created the Deming Prize for innovations in quality control. It is still awarded annually to the individual deemed to have produced the greatest advancement in the art of quality control and the ceremony is broadcast on national television. In Japan, it’s a big deal!

I personally had the distinct honor and pleasure of attending one of Deming’s last seminars before he died at the end of 1993, and I can tell you it changed my life. He was very soft-spoken, but his words resonated and still influence me today.

Of course, the best quality control systems in the world can’t fix a bad design. Good quality control simply means parts are always built to the design specification, but if that design calls for steel that rusts easily or a rubber compound that deteriorates and cracks within a year, then the parts are never going to be durable, no matter how well they are made. This is where testing, good design practice, and experience come in. At Toyota, this means sticking with a design for a long time and making constant small improvements on it. If you look underneath a Toyota, you will see relatively simple designs. They stick with what they know, do it very well, and don’t deviate from it very much. That leads to a ton of corporate learning telling them how to build durable parts. It also means that innovation is often slower than at other companies. That may not matter to the average Toyota customer who instead values long life and transportation that gets them from A to B without drama.

Customer Expectations

In reality, “The average Toyota customer” probably covers over 99% of all car buyers, not just Toyota customers, and this leads us back to the first two of our three words: Customer Expectations. The proliferation of Toyota cars in the world’s automobile markets has given customers an expectation that cars should last a long time. Any car that doesn’t, quickly gains a bad reputation and correspondingly lower sales. Many manufacturers found this out the hard way and either failed or were bought and absorbed by larger competitors. The smart ones jumped on the band-wagon, bought into Deming’s ideas, and improved their quality and durability. For me personally this meant that by the end of my automotive design career, we would test to 150,000 miles and parts couldn’t just be “functional”, they had to achieve at least 80% or more of their original specification. What that meant varied for each part, but it meant that overall, the car couldn’t just be drivable, it had to perform well.

A great example of this is Hyundai. When Hyundai first came into the US market in the 90’s, their quality and durability wasn’t anywhere near Toyota or the other Japanese companies. Realizing they needed to gain customer’s trust, they were the first to implement a 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty. This gave customers some reassurance their cars would last and that they would be taken care of in the event something broke, but it also forced Hyundai to up their game. Warranty repairs are expensive for a manufacturer. It is money thrown down the drain. The best way to avoid this waste is to improve quality so the cars don’t break in the first place, and that is what they did. Now, while I have never owned a Hyundia (or Kia), I hear good things about them from a quality standpoint.

Buying a Used Car Now

So, what does this mean for those of you looking to buy a used car? Should you even care about mileage? Based on my experience, I think the answer is a qualified “no.” It’s qualified by the fact that not all cars are created equal. Not all manufacturers have succeeded in matching Toyota’s legendary quality and some models have a well-deserved reputation for poor durability, and of course, not everybody maintains their car well.

In general, though, I think mileage has moved way down the list of priorities when it comes to evaluating a used car. Not until you get to 200,000+ miles should it even be a consideration, in my view. Of course, if all else is equal, get the lower mileage cars, as it’ll be worth more since a car’s value to most appraisers still tracks with mileage, but if you are looking for a car that’s going to work for your needs, I wouldn’t think twice about a well-maintained 150,000 mile car.

So, what do you think? Are we really at a point now that we can stop worrying about mileage in used cars so much? If so, where do you think we should draw the “Oh that’s too high, I’m not buying that car”-line now? Should we even have a line?

Top graphic images: Toyota; Aaron/stock.adobe.com