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Life sentences

On a couple of occasions recently you have said that the design life of today's cars is 7 years. I find this a bit depressing having run a Mercedes 190D for a dozen years after buying it at 35,000 miles, and even when I sold it I felt it had many years in it. Trouble was, as a non-turbo diesel it was becoming difficult to overtake anything on B roads. Is there any car built today with the life Mercs used to have? Scrapping cars after such a short time is surely not very green?

Asked on 4 September 2010 by GA, via email

Answered by Honest John
The only car I have driven in the past 2 years that felt like it might get
to 500,000 miles over 10 years was the current W204 MB C200 CDI SE Classic manual.
The only car I have driven in the past 2 years that felt like it might get
to 500,000 miles over 10 years was the current W204 MB C200 CDI SE Classic manual.
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