I guess it depends a lot on the mileage but I know people with 20 year old Toyota Corollas with more than 200 thousand miles that are still going strong. No crazy maintenance costs either.
If you're in North America are you really going to be 'stranded' or just footing the cost of a one-way rental and waiting for the check from the junkyard which will almost certainly cover it?
Highly unlikely the average HNer can't come up with $1000 for an emergency (nota bene: for sure some can't, that why I didn't say "every HNer").
Can't we be lackadaisical anymore? :-p
[1] Let me specify "passenger vehicles" and "US roads" lest someone jump in to point out that box trucks last longer or that cars get shipped to foreign markets at end of life, etc...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/28/cars-on-american-roads-keep-...
> The average age of a car on U.S. roads rose to 12.1 years in 2021, according to IHS Markit. The average age had been 11.9 years in 2020. In 2002, the average age was 9.6 years.
And in most of the rest of the world, it's even longer, as the vast majority of the rest of the world is poorer.
Anybody who has to stiff someone to scrape up the lump sum to replace a transmission is probably going to replace the transmission rather than roll the dice spending the same or more on a different car that might need something else in short order. Those people also aren't the same people who rack up big bills for random suspension wear parts because they don't have those parts replaced until they start impeding the vehicle's ability to get from A to B <clutches pearls> because they can't afford to indulge in that kind of maintenance.
With what, though? Not a new part. A transmission from another vehicle that got scrapped. That's the point: these cars don't "last" on their own, they're just the winners in a cannibalism race.
Of the 40 cars on my block, 8 are over 10 years old and it’s 7 toyotas, a vw, a miata and a subie.