<VV> "low mileage" Corvairs and any vehicle old enough to

[Padgett]

>>  Dividing milage by age mostly becomes a meaningless intellectual 
>> curiosity after about 10 or 15 years

That is a farce. What I said was that three things contribute to 
deterioration: age, mileage, and exposure. Each contributes to different 
things and in different ways. They do not really combine. Frankly, there 
are a number of things underneath that would worry me about a 40 (or 20 or 
10 for that matter) year old car with 10,000 miles. Condition is everything 
and condition is only somewhat related to age or mileage.

Now in the 1960's people figured a car was worn out at 100,000. I built a 
number of 100,000 mile engines into race engines as long as everything 
miked good. Today 200,000 is more the norm and any engine that grenades 
under 100,000 probably had something wrong from the factory if kept within 
design limits.

It happens, I have a 90 3800 block in my garage that dropped the center cam 
bearings at 85,000/nine years old that was carefully maintained and never 
abused (have heard of a few other '90s doing the same thing) but is an 
anomaly IMNSHO. I still consider the 3800 to be nearly bulletproof.

When looking for a used car, 10 years or older, I generally seek ones in 
the 50,000 to 70,000 mile range. Of course even my daily driver only uses 
about a tank a month so such last me a long time. But what I really look 
for is overall condition. Age and mileage are just factors but far from the 
most important.

Padgett