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Car A is in the worst condition. It may not have driven as many miles, but the engine was still running and the transmission has done more work. I think cars should have hour meters on their engines similar to airplanes to get the real "mileage" of the motor.
My last 3 Chevy trucks had hour meters along with the trip computer, fuel economy and odometer....
I think he means car A will have 25,000 miles after 5 years and car B will have 100,000 miles after 5 years. If car B had 30% of its driving through local trips that means 30,000 in local mileage and an extra 70,000 in highway miles. Car A will be in better shape.
Ok, fair enough.
How about a more extreme example?
Car A: 20,000 miles in 5 years, all short trips and local.
Car B: 200,000 miles in 5 years, 99% highway miles on cruise control, 1% stop and go.
Assume everything else equal (make/model, new cars at year 0, climate, maintenance schedule, even both cars have the same # of hours of operation.)
No that you are at 200K i;d go with the car with less mileage.
If we were talking a 5 yr old car with 10K on it vs a 5 yr old car with 100K I'd go the 100K car any day. Assuming it was a decent brand. IE, Toyota, Honda, Nissan.
Kind of a bad comparison. 100,000 miles of all highway driving, vs 70,000 of all stop and go city driving, would be better. Yours is pretty extreme of a difference. I think I'd take the car with 25,000 miles.
My intuition says that the car that's driven many miles for long trips and relatively little stop and go traffic will be in worse shape over the long run than the car that's driven little but for mostly short trips.
Let's use 2 cars as an example:
Car A: Driven 5000 miles a year, mostly short trips of around 5 miles at a time, 100% local and stop and go traffic.
Car B: Driven 20,000 miles a year, mostly long trips of around 20+ miles at a time, 70% highway, 30% local and stop and go.
Assume all other miscellaneous variable are equal: both cars are the same make/model bought new at year 0, both cars follow the recommended maintenance schedule, both drivers are equally aggressive, both use the exact same gas, both are in the exact same city and climate, etc. (If I didn't mention the variable, assume it's the same for both cars.)
Given all of this, would Car A be in better shape after 5 years than Car B? Despite the notion that short trips "destroy" a car, I'd think Car A will be in better shape due to its low miles. But it'll be in vastly worse shape than a car that's attained its 25,000 miles through mostly long trips.
What's the conclusion?
Car A will have a motor that is internally coated in sludge because it never really got up to running temps, I've torn apart thousands of motors, the babied city drivers were always packed full of nasty black sludge.
Perhaps I should let sleeping posts lie, but I came across this thread while searching for information, and since the last post is only a few months ago ...
An engine hours meter on a car would indeed give you more information, in conjunction with mileage, than you could get from an odometer alone.
However most equipment that is fitted with hours meters - airplanes, boats, stationary engines, earth-moving machinery - are used in applications where the engine is largely run at a more or less steady load, so the reading on the Hobbs meter (hours) is a more consistent indicator of mechanical wear than it might be on an automobile.
In addition to the difficulties involved in accurately tracking mileage in, say, an airplane (no GPS back when they were establishing maintenance protocols!) I'm sure this is a factor in why most non-ground-transport motorized equipment have their maintenance schedules specified in hours rather than miles.
Why aren't both standard in a car? I don't know, but I would guess cost and convention. The hours meters aren't there for the benefit of the used-bulldozer buyer, they're there for adherence to maintenance and overhaul schedules. Cars have maintenance intervals in miles, therefore no need for a Hobbs. That's my guess, anyway.
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Hours meter vs. odometer
