Electronic mileage recorders can still be clocked!

That's a maybe. A rep's car will spend plenty time in towns too.

When I said identical cars I assumed proper servicing. A high mileage one where servicing has been neglected is likely to be in a sorry state.

Most of the genuine high mileage recent cars I've seen at auction are lucky to have had a valet. Certainly not brought to perfect condition for sale purposes. Why would they waste the money?

I think you mean as they become ill-maintained and in poor condition. That has no correlation to mileage.

Let's look at four of our cars...

One has c.50,000 miles. It's currently in rather a lot of parts, having structural rot replaced. I have no idea what the mechanicals are like, but am expecting to do work to them.

One has c.135,000 miles. I was rather disappointed that it wouldn't start the other day. But, then, it's not been started since late 2010. I s'pose I might need to take ten minutes to have a little prod. It shouldn't take more than that.

One has closing rapidly on 150,000 miles. It's running very well indeed, despite having cost us £100 four years ago.

One is closing rapidly on 200,000 miles. We've just put 50k on it in eighteen months, across 20 countries and some really quite challenging conditions.

Meanwhile, my mother has a four year old sensible small diesel estate, with 30k on it. It's already had the DPF hoovered out once, has a funny noise which I suspect is the beginning of DMF failure, and gets the same average fuel economy as our 23yo 150k petrol.

I suspect our highest mileage vehicle is more valuable than her estate. It certainly will be in a year's time.

Really? Apart from the fact that you said "It doesn't" to pretty much this exact statement, then restated it as a truism, exactly why is this "obvious"?

Which would you rather buy? A 3yo modern common rail diesel with 90k motorway miles on it or one with 30k OAP local running-around on it?

But 'wearing out' isn't directly attributed to mileage - a low mileage car will more than likely have been used for urban journeys, so will have disproportionate wear to clutch and suspension components, for example.

I have seen lots of cars where sellers have neglected timing belt changes, because they believe it's fine to leave it to the mileage interval - where the reality is it should have been changed years ago.

That all depends on the timing of sending them back to the lease company

- I've always had to take my cars for their first MOT before they've been collected on 3 year contracts.

I suspect it's so the lease company can get any work needed done under warranty and to make them easier to sell and more valuable at auction.

Oi! Some of us OAP's look after our cars!

I only average around 4K a year now, but do an oil change annually, and walk for pretty much all journeys under three miles. In the winter, when the car gets used for shorter trips in the dark, I will pick a nice day to just go for a more lengthy drive.

I know a few folk with company vehicles supplied under a lease. Pressures are such that they rarely get serviced, and when they do it's done by a mobile guy who doesn't do much more than an oil change and fluid top-up.

One of them is on 30K from new, and has had nothing done to it...

Chris

Doesn't cost them much to chuck it in for an MOT - my time is already paid for, and any problems will more often than not be picked up as warranty repairs.

They may not clean them - but I've always been asked to do the MOT.

In other news, bears s*it in the woods.

What car has only motorway miles? It will likely still have done as many town miles with the motorway ones simply added on.

BTW, I don't know of any private user who will clock up 10k a year with purely town miles. At an average speed of perhaps 10 mph that would mean spending about 3 hours every single day driving the thing. And diesels don't suffer from short journeys as much as petrol cars do. A mate of mine died fairly recently, at 68. He insisted on buying a new car fairly often. His one had done just under 5000 miles in three years. It drove (to me) like a brand new car.

I was thinking more of the 8k rpm clutch-slip touch-parking kind...

Who said "DPF"?

In which case you'd only buy a cr diesel if your maths is really bad.

Every modern vehicle I've seen doesn't need much more than an oil change & fluid top up in 30K, change the fuel filter & grease the door latches is about it.

It's known as 'Mileage Correction' and there are quite a few companies offering this service. One such trader was recently jailed for nine months. See:

My 97,000 mile car was due for a cam belt change at the next service, but if it now only has 69,000 on the clock I assume it won't get done, with possibly damaging consequences to the engine!

No s*it. There's plenty of places offering this service on the interweb. It'd cost about £75 to get the Honda Jazz I nearly imported corrected - I was going to buy a set of UK clocks for it secondhand and have the mileage set to the correct amount.

That or an instrument failure are about the only good reasons I can think of for a 'mileage correction'. Surely not enough to support all the traders who offer this service on the internet!