The United States is a place of the automobile. In fact, we are one of the most car-dependent countries in the world.
How many of us own them?
As it goes, about 92% of U.S. households have at least one vehicle. Only 8% have no vehicle available.
But so many of us have many. There are approximately 300 million registered motor vehicles in the United States. I know some people who have five or six vehicles, even though some of them are collecting rust in their yards.
Rural households are much more likely to own multiple vehicles because public transportation is often limited. Large city folk are more likely not to own a vehicle at all.
Cars are complicated things. There are more than 30,000 parts in a new car. That’s a lot of gadgets. And wing nuts. And spark plugs.
And with all those parts, it is hard to believe that 96.4 million vehicles were produced worldwide last year.
That’s about 264,000 vehicles built every day. Or roughly 11,000 vehicles every hour. Or if you want get right down to it, that is around three vehicles every second rolling off assembly lines around the globe.
How much will it cost you? Well, last year, the average cost of a new car was right around $50,000. Average. Ka Ching.
But what do we look for in a car? Some say value. Others say safety. Comfort. Looks. Status. Some want speed. The top speed in a car comes in the way of the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut. It is the world’s fastest car and can go 330 mph. I’ve never heard of it before.
And the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe holds the world record for the most expensive car. The sale price was $142.8 million, and they were sold in May of 2022. Only two were ever built.
Finally. Some cars don’t last very long. Others never seem to go away.
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A man once put 3 million miles on a single car. I’m not kidding. For most of us, we turn a car over way before it reaches 100,000. Some people can run them all the way up to 250,000 miles. And while that might sound like a lot, it pales in comparison to the world record: 3,250,257 miles.
The car was owned by an American man named Irv Gordon. And that is how he drove his Volvo P1800 over the course of 52 years.
For those crunching the numbers, that averages out to a whopping 60,000 miles per year for more than half a century. Gordon bought the vehicle in 1966. On a Friday. By the end of the weekend, he’d already racked up 1,500 miles.
One contributing factor was that Gordon had to drive a 125-mile daily commute. He was a teacher. That is commitment.
So there it is. A little ride in the cars of our lives.
How’s your ride?
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“The cars we drive say a lot about us.” — Alexandra Paul
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“The journey matters as much as the destination.” — Dan Millman
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
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“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.” — Angela N. Blount
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