Originally Posted By: MichaelRS
What constitutes a car lasting 200 or 300k miles? And by that I mean, what is it that lasts, or is not replaced to make a car qualify for the title of lasting X number of hundreds of thousands of miles?
Or maybe another way to ask it is, what needs to be replaced or worked on for the car to qualify for NOT having lasted X number of hundreds of thousands of miles.
The answers above are good ones. Additionally, I'd add a few more qualifications:
1) Internal wear rate must be low. So no burning oil or timing chain failures.
2) Emission controls must continue to work properly without excessive/expensive problems.
3) Various heating/cooling/interior failures must be minimal.
My Jaguar X-Type's powertrain has been mechanically fair, (with the exception of the AWD transfer case needing 2 new bearings) but the interior has been awful. Nearly 100% of interior components have failed, from the AC evaporator, to the climate control computer, interior lights computer, to the interior and exterior door handles, locks, power seat motors, gearshifter (manual trans with cable shifter) , emergency brake cable and, of course, all of the emissions equipment from the throttle body to the cats and the o2 sensors, intake manifold seals and on and on. So while I'm near 200K miles, little of the car is still functional other than the engine and transmission.