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Just a random thought

5K views 32 replies 23 participants last post by  RracerST 
#1 ·
A co worker was talking to me recently about my car, he proceeded to ask me my mileage. 108k. He asked why I drive it so much. A little back story I’m the only owner of this car. I bought it new and I bought it for a reason, I needed a daily driver that was reliable and yet fun. And obviously as a car enthusiast since I was probably 6 years old (currently 29) I love to drive. It drives me bonkers when other “car guys” express saving the mileage. That’s like saying you don’t bang your girl to keep her tight for the next guy. Since taking ownership I’ve taken her on dozens of road trips, late night/mid day joy rides just to get out of the house or to blow off steam while working on my project cars. It’s not the fastest or coolest car on the road but dang it she’s a blast to cruise back roads in. No music, windows down and just have fun. the sounds, the handling, the interior feel. It’s perfect for the real enthusiast that just loves to be in their car. I test drove probably a dozen other vehicles before the ST. And stock it made me smile more than any of the other cars that week. That’s why I bought it (and ford family discount) can’t beat that haha. I was just curious as to if any other of my ST family felt the same way I do? Don’t get me wrong, I get the idea of preserving a car and what not but being an enthusiast isn’t a huge part of it modifying, driving, and fixing your stuff? It’s my daily and I baby it and take good care of it but it’s still something you’re supposed to enjoy as often as possible right? Isn’t that why we buy these cars? I just never understood why people would keep them locked up the majority of the time.
 
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#2 ·
I agree wholeheartedly. I bought my st used for the same purpose as you, a fun daily. My turbo mustang is my weekend warrior but the focus is probably more fun to drive, as much as i hate to say it. As far as miles, i also agree. Why even own a car if youre afriad to drive it? Whats the point? It was built to be driven. Nothing lasts forever so why bother trying to preserve it?
 
#3 ·
When you want another in a couple years because you can't find a car with the same feeling, you'll be grateful to the few who kept their mileage down.
 
#4 ·
Nope, when things break I fix them myself. As stated above isn’t that part of being an enthusiast? Especially with them no longer making this car stateside I don’t really plan on getting rid of it. If something goes wrong I’ll order new parts and replace them. Maybe an old GT500 or 68 Camaro, you know a classic hot rod I can understand keeping those locked away for summer use only but that’s it. To each his own.
 
#6 ·
I agree with you, except for the part about the girl thing. LOL!!!

Driving is good for the car and owner. I to am a driver, and driving vacations are what I like. Sure you can get there quicker by plane, but enjoying the drive is what it is all about. Getting the car out there, stretching it's legs, and spending time with it, it what owning a car is all about. It is the low mileage older ones, that you have to be leery on.

So get out there and drive, take the back roads, it will do you and your ST some good.
 
#7 ·
I agree as well. I have a 2018 that now has ~20k miles and probably 10k of that is roadtrips. Could have spent a little more money and flown, but whats the fun in that?
 
#12 ·
I use my cars what they were built for, to be driven. I bought an 18 in March of April 2018 with 60 miles off the lot. It currently has 33k on it. I'm happy with it and as much as I would like to maybe have a few thousand less on it, I haven't had an issue, and I have the 100k mile 7 yr warranty thru Ford and I have Speed6 I'm repairing and once that's fixed the mileage increase will drop on this incredibly.
 
#13 ·
About 120k on my 2016. I drive a lot for work (and get paid mileage so this car is actually making me money). I also don't understand preserving anything by not using it. We and it will all be dust again someday, so use it while it's around. I had over 270k on my 1990 Legacy wagon which I loved. Had intended to restore it, but the house kept stealing its money and it ended up getting junked. I'm glad I had the time with it that I had.

I have a truss frame 1912 Iver Johnson Special Racer (high end bicycle in its day and fairly sought after) in great original condition. I use it as any of my other bikes to go around the city, down gravel bike paths, whatever. I've even let curious people ride it at shows because it has no point if it isn't used. I also have a couple of wood kayaks with the hulls painted instead of bare wood because they're meant to be used, which means scratches and so forth. I'm building a speedboat and I fully intend to use it even when it means it won't look pristine for long. I'm not one of those "patina" people, but I like seeing something that shows it's had a life. If objects can have a "soul" (and certainly, the higher value of things owned by famous people/involved in major events vs the same ones that weren't shows a lot of people take some stock in this), it is only by their use that they would acquire it.
 
#14 ·
Purchased mine in the summer of '16 - has 68k on it now. Been 3 years. I had to drive it for work for 1.5 years, but it's held up really well.

I remember the first time I drove the car. I couldn't get over the steering feel. The nose of the car just went where you wanted it to, and there was a sense of rigidity / stability to complement. I recently drove a BRZ, and after all the rave reviews I figured it would have better feel. It was a little sloppy to me... can't really describe it. I don't feel like it dives into corners as well. Maybe a little more planted at higher speeds.

I agree with everything you said here. For the money, this is a hard car to beat. The balance and well roundedness the ST provides is incredible.
 
#15 ·
@michael_ST and @TurboGT -
I think you miss the fact that your current car may be taken from you, through no fault of your own.... Theft, T-bone, rear-ending. Something unrepairable. Then you go try out a bunch of other cars and none of them bring that same satisfaction that the FoST did. THAT's when you appreciate the ability to find a low mileage replacement FoST.
 
#17 ·
I'm absolutely in agreement with you there, i just dont understand the thought process on their behalf, honestly. I love driving the car so much, i cant imagine only getting it out once or twice a month. Ive put 1900 miles on it since the beginning of june. Before i bought my '14 st3 i was going to go look at a '14 ST1 with 4,900 miles on it. Course it sold a couple weeks before i was financially ready to make a move, but it would have been cool to have a "new" 2014.
 
#16 ·
Couple thoughts to help make sense of things hopefully. The generation my dad grew up in the life cycle of cars was around 80K miles and 100K was the upper limit at least for the engines so that may explain the shock if your co worker is older. In addition when I met my wife she thought that 60K miles is a lot and her family never kept a vehicle past 40k because they were worried about maintenance costs etc. Surprising number of people are this way which blew my mind considering I had 190K on my last car and had it from 20k.

Now as for people who don't drive their cars, try to keep the miles off on purpose, garage it; It's because they can't afford the depreciation hit from putting miles on or they don't want to spring for the maintenance/repair costs that come with the miles. While that may be a pretty big generalization the people I've met who do this claim it's for investment purposes but in reality unless it's a vintage Ferrari 250 GTO or another rare collector car the value isn't going anywhere and usually doesn't. Just my two cents.
 
#19 ·
I told my wife this is the last car I'm buying, so bury me in it.

And I want to make sure it has low mileage and clean, so when I pull up in hell the Devil can say wow an ST with low Mileage!!
 
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#20 ·
My 2015 Focus ST3 has only 33,600 miles on it. By the OP's definition, maybe I keep it "locked up". I think a broad judgement that I'm missing opportunities to enjoy my car lacks nuance. For example...

(1) The job at which I've been employed since June 2018 has no office. Every single person in the company, from the founder and CEO, to the newest junior customer support rep, works anywhere they want. I often go two to five days at a time without leaving my house. If I don't have anywhere to drive, then my ST won't accumulate any miles. Neither will any other car. My ST is my daily driver in spring, summer, and fall but I just don't drive as much as I used to.

(2) I don't drive my ST in the winter. Ever. I've never purchased winter tires for it, nor a spare set of wheels on which to mount the winter tires.

I purchased my ST at age 44, and it's the first new car I ever bought. It is *by far* the quickest and nicest car I've ever owned. In central Ohio, two things are applied to the road to address snow and ice: salt, which is somewhat corrosive, and a brine solution, which is fantastically corrosive. I've been fixing cars since 1994, so I'm accustomed to working on rusty vehicles, and I want my ST to be free of that corrosion for a while. I love taking my wheels off to rotate my tires, or clean the wheels, and seeing no corrosion at all even after four years. I love getting under the car to change the oil and seeing a pristine chassis. My ST has *never* seen salt or brine. This please me; it's part of how I enjoy the car.

The car I drive in the winter is a 2003 Ford Focus ZX5 which I've owned for 10.5 years. It's old, noisy, and rusty. It's also far less enjoyable to drive than the ST. But if the point here is "You should be enjoying your car" then the details of enjoyment matter a lot. In the winter, I'd have winter tires on the ST. This is nearly a contradiction: winter tires on an ST. The ST is a marvelous corner carver: nearly instantaneous turn in, video-game steering speed, hand-of-god brakes, good mid-range punch from the engine, and trailing throttle oversteer which, combined with big sticky tires, make the ST a giggle and whooping machine. Put winter tires on it, and it does none of this very well. I don't see how that's very enjoyable. I'd rather drive my rusty rattletrap whose fun in the snow is that I really don't care so much if it gets exposed to salt because it's already visibly rusty. Even if the rattletrap gets damaged - it's worth almost nothing.

(3) Cars are tools. I have a rental house about 4.5 miles from my house. I'm often over there to do maintenance or fix something, or to fulfill my contractual duty as trash collector. I never drive the ST there. Why would I? I've got tools in the back, or even trash. I drive the ZX5.

There are also different types and levels of enjoyment. Next weekend, I and four friends will converge on Robbinsville, NC for 2.5 days of taming the Tail of the Dragon. For the uninitiated, this is a famous road comprised of 318 turns in 11 miles. Last year we ran TotD 8.5 times out and back. I'm sure we'll do that and maybe more this upcoming trip, plus a lot of other twisty roads in that area. Last year we did about 10,000 turns in three days, and at least half of those were closer to the limits of the tires than not. The ST positively shines on a road like this, and my tires are visibly worn at the end of the trip. Maybe WHAT you do with the miles matters as much or more than how many miles.
 
#22 ·
I have 36K on a 14, bought new, Most mileage comes from a few summer vacation road trips and up to my place in the Catskills, if not for that driving I would have half that.

Having a work truck and another car helps keep the miles down.

Should have dropped the extra $$ an bought the GT Mustang, but I'm old and cheap and bought the ST
 
#23 ·
Should have dropped the extra $$ an bought the GT Mustang, but I'm old and cheap and bought the ST
I hear you. In January 2015 when I started shopping in earnest for the car that became my ST, I walked into a Ford dealer. There in front of me was a shiny race red 2015 Mustang EcoBoost. I'd not seen an S550 up close, so I got in it, closed the door, and realized that what I wanted was a new Mustang. Then I turned and looked at the useless back seat and...

Well, I have three sons. I thought of that Mustang just this very morning when I and my three sons (14, 13, and 11) walked out of our house to go to church. I'd *still* rather have the Mustang, on most days. But my not-small-anymore-and-getting-larger-quickly trio of boys fit very nicely in my "meaningful miles" ST. I made the right choice in 2015. You may be old and cheap, but sometimes old == foresight.
 
#25 ·
It's great to see so many people enjoying these cars the way they were designed to be used.

I can add a data point to those who do not understand why someone would own a car that they try not to drive. I own a few small-displacement "fun" cars. Over my 20 years of buying and driving cars, I find that I tend to fall in love with a car and try to preserve it for as long as possible so I can enjoy it longer- so I tuck it away in my garage, and buy a different daily driver. So far I have a 60kmi 1988 BMW E30 M3, and '82 RX7 (I put a single turbo 13B rotary in that car out of a third gen RX-7), a 30kmi 1999 S2000 and my 2017 Focus ST (my DD), plus my wife's 2014 Honda Odyssey. I sold my 2003 BMW E39 wagon (5MT, sport package car) last year for more than I paid for it 12 years earlier and intended on purchasing a Focus RS, but those were $15k more expensive than the ST, and looked to me to be cars that will be limited production cars that I did not want to end up as something I saw as a collectible. I just wanted something that I liked to drive that was not going to appreciate in value, so I would just enjoy it without thinking about miles, values etc. My RX-7 is sort of a project car that I am trying to find to funds and time to complete.
I do drive my S2000 on dry days, and it's not all that rare (although the AP1's are becoming somewhat collectible, especially bone stock ones like mine). My E30 M3 went into the stratosphere value-wise. I paid $7500 for mine back in 1997, and it's worth around $80k now (but parts are largely NLA, and so I'm very protective about driving my all original example, especially here in congested NJ.) I have been married for 8 years and we have two young children, so since buying the RX-7, the E30 M3 and the S2000 my free time (and extra money) have vanished, and what little there is left over is spent on pretty much everything other than cars and car parts, so I am trying to keep my fleet in good condition on a shoestring budget, at least until my wife goes back to work and money is a little less of an issue. I hope my ST remains a fun, relatively economic car to own and plan on keeping it for many more years.
 
#26 ·
I'm a bit torn here.
I love my ST and I absolutely have a blast driving it. It's my only car and thus my daily.
Yet, I'm driving about 10 - 11k miles a year, having bought it with 17500 miles in April last year. I could easily drive more, but I'm babying it a bit for a couple of reasons.

First: It's my only car and I plan to keep it for at least another 7 years, which means it will have above 100k at some point. In itself this might not be a bad thing, but for me, it's a bit like "Cars above 100k are old and worn". I don't want my car to be old and worn!

Second: I'm a bit budget limited at the moment. If something expensive (above $1500) breaks, I'm screwed. So if my engine decided to go belly up, I would have to take a loan, which I don't want to.

Third: I'm no DIY hero. I have neither the skills nor the tools or even the location (living in an apartment with an underground car park which is dark as ****) to fix stuff myself. Which takes me back to being on a budget, as I have to go to a garage for every minor ailment.

So, while I could easily do enough joyrides to end up putting 25k a year on it, I'm restricting myself quite a bit. For now at least. If thing loosen up financially it the future, it might change.
 
#27 ·
Basically the same here... I purchased June 28th 2015 with 2 miles, today a few miles away from hitting 90k

I don't daily the car as of a week ago. so the miles should go up "slower", but I still have long trips planned for this summer. same here I just love to drive it.
 
#29 ·
My 2014 has 175k on it. I drive it to work daily, attend several track days a year as well as a few trips down the drag strip. Like you said “it’s not the nicest thing on the road but it’s a blast to drive.
 

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#30 ·
The value is determined by year, mileage isn't much of a factor. I'm not saving my car, I love driving it but I have a few vehicles, a 2014 fusion with 20k and an 89 gmc 4x4 that I have put a whopping 4k miles on in the last 5 years. So with 10k already on my 2016 focus it's my go to car to drive. I like driving but I don't live in my car. With good maintenance they last forever so don't be afraid to drive as much as you want. But just because you don't drive a lot doesn't mean your saving it for something either. I have 2 sets of rims and drive year round but it won't stay warm in winter unless you are giving it gas and that's in KY where it's not that cold.
 
#33 ·
I bought my 2018 ST1 just over a year ago with 41 miles on her. She’s about to turn over 19k miles this week. In that time I’ve done a resonator delete TB front and rear traction bars Mountune bypass valve Depo intercooler RS airbox and green filter Steeda clutch spring BLOX 490 shift knob Cobb Accessport with lifetime 93/e30 tune from JST preloaded my wastegate actuator converted my rear window washer into an intercooler sprayer and I autocross her monthly as well as daily her. So yeah I totally agree with you man lol.
 
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