“DRIVE IT TILL THE WHEELS FALL OFF…”
by David Drum
DRIVE IT TILL THE WHEELS COME OFF…
“Drive it till the wheels fall off.”
As a younger and more impressionable man, I once read the above advice in an auto magazine. The subject was how long it made economic sense to drive your car. I’m a thrifty sort. I remembered this advice.
In 1993, my old sports car caught on fire on the freeway, and the insurance company totaled it.
After shopping around for a while, I saw an ad for a new Suzuki Samurai for $7,000. It was the bait and switch car, used by the Santa Monica Suzuki dealership to pull customers in and switch them to a more recent model, or a more expensive car. I didn’t have much money. This was the cheapest new car I could find. I’d seen Samurais around town, and I liked the way they looked.
The little white Suzuki Samurai had no extras at all. It had no tape player or CD player. It didn’t even have a radio. Manual transmission. 2-wheel drive. Hand-cranked windows. No air conditioner. The Suzuki was so bare bones, it didn’t even come with a convertible top, but I liked it right away.
The Samurai was enormously popular when it was rolled out in 1986. The car resembled a compact, stylish little Jeep with 4-wheel drive, and it got good mileage. It sold like crazy for a few years, particularly to off-roaders, but by the time I went car-shopping, the Samurai had a bad name due to allegations about its propensity to roll over. By 1993, Suzuki was phasing the Samurai out for the Vitara, a bigger model with a wider wheelbase.
Suzuki made motorized bicycles and motorcycles long before they made cars. My brother Ellery, an expert motorcyclist, told me that the Japanese company’s motorcycles had the reputation of being workhorses, very dependable motorcycles that lasted a long time. That was the kind of car I wanted – not a fast, flashy sports car like the replica of a 1956 MG that went up in smoke on the freeway, but a sensible little vehicle that just kept going and going and didn’t cost much to drive.
A diligent salesman at the dealership tried his best to switch me to a newer and more expensive model, but I held firm. I wanted the bait and switch car. I bought it without a top and purchased one a few months later.
That was 33 years ago. I’m still driving the car.
I’ve driven my little Suzuki all over Los Angeles. I’ve taken it on ski trips to the mountains. I’ve driven far out into the desert. I’ve puttered up and down the California coast. My car has been in two wrecks –I once rearended another vehicle, a car once rearended me. Each time I had my car repaired and drove on with a salvage title.
My car’s latest odometer reading is 339,143 miles.
People still flag me down every couple of months or so and offer to buy the car.
How do I do it? I’m big on maintenance. I’ve been careful to change the car’s oil every 3,000 miles, keep the car tuned up, and to fix something when it was broken. I follow the maintenance schedule in the owner’s manual. I’ve gone through at least five canvas tops. I had some painting and body work done a few years ago, and I may have to do more before long.
I baby my Suzuki. I drive as cautiously as any little old lady from Pasadena. I rarely drive above 55 or 60 miles per hour, even on the freeway where bigger and bolder vehicles sometimes angrily honk and roar around me. I once read that 55 MPH is the most efficient speed to drive a car, and I like buying less gas, polluting less, and putting less stress on the little engine as I drive.
I have a great mechanic, Andy, who happily fixes my car when it needs it.
Car buffs are surprised when I tell them that my engine has never been overhauled. At 200,000 miles, Andy insisted that I get a valve job. Even under his watchful eye, I’m sure my Suzuki won’t last forever, but it’s been going strong for a long time.
My brother told me Suzukis were workhorses. He was right. My Samurai just keeps on going.
Of course, I have sacrificed the style, convenience, speed, and comfort of a newer car, but I have saved money. For one thing, my car is simple and relatively easy to repair. My auto insurance costs less than insurance for a newer car.
I financed my Suzuki when I bought it and paid perhaps $1,500 in interest. I don’t think I’ve averaged more than $1,000 a year in repairs. Driving my vehicle for 33 years, even adding perhaps $3,000 for smog certificates, tops, parking tickets and so forth, this makes my car expenditures approximately $45,000.
Divided by the 33 years I’ve been driving, driving my car has cost me only about $1,348 per year, excluding the cost of insurance and gasoline (my Suzuki still gets around 30 miles per gallon).
Calculate the difference between keeping an old car and buying a new one every five years to see the difference. In 2026, this year, the least expensive new car on the market costs more than $20,000.
However, some experts don’t recommend what I’m doing at all.
Liam Cope, an electrical engineer who founded the website Engineer.fix, writes that most service vehicles are engineered for a life of about 15 years. He says a 30-year-old vehicle is “a rolling restoration project requiring substantial and continuous investment of time and capital.”
Body-on-frame vehicles like trucks and SUVs are a bit easier to repair than cars, he admits, but parts do become difficult to source. Rust prevention is an issue in some parts of the U.S. And older cars don’t have safety features like airbags and stability control systems found on most new cars, as well as features like back-up camera systems, electric windows, electric seats, automatic transmissions, air conditioners and all the rest.
To keep up a 30-year-old car, Cope recommends an even stricter maintenance schedule than I follow. He recommends proactively replacing components like rubber hoses and belts based on age even if they appear sound. He recommends flushing the brake fluid every two years, and changing coolant and differential transmission fluids at shorter intervals than on a new car.
Cope estimates upkeep costs vehicles over 15 years old often more than $1,500 annually although I think my costs are less than that.
I’ll drive my little Samurai until the wheels fall off. And hey — the wheels haven’t fallen off yet.
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