100000 Mile Service at our Frostproof shop

It used to be. It is not anymore. Maintained reasonably well, plenty of vehicles run well past 200,000 miles, and the ones that get there are almost never the ones that got lucky.

What changes after the milestone. Up to now, maintenance has mostly meant doing what the schedule listed. From here it shifts toward watching what ages. Rubber gets hard, hoses and bushings and seals give up slowly, the cooling system stops being new, and suspension parts that were merely worn at 60,000 start affecting how the car stops and steers. Most of that is gradual, which is why an inspection you can compare against last year's is worth more now than it was at 30,000.

Planning the second hundred thousand. We like to look at a car at this stage and answer two questions. What is likely to need money in the next year or two, and roughly in what order. Knowing that a water pump and a set of tires are on the horizon is very different from meeting both in the same week. It also lets you spread the cost, which is how most people actually keep a car this long.

Keep it or move on. Sometimes the honest answer is that a repair is not worth it, and we will say so. Far more often the math runs the other way, because a well kept vehicle with a known history and no monthly payment is a hard thing to replace for the price of the repair sitting in front of you. What we will not do is talk you into either answer. You will get what we found, what it costs, and what we would do if it were parked in our driveway.