about 25 years. He totaled the money we paid to him. It was over $30,000. He thanked me. They treat us well. We have had as many as 4 cars, but averaged about 2.5 over those 25 years. Bought all our cars used. Most we drove until they were at least 15 years old, some made it beyond 20. Paid $11k for a minivan about 20 years ago. All the other cars we paid $7,000 or less, I'm pretty sure. It is inconvenient to not have access to a car being repaired for a day or 2, sometimes over the weekend. The shop will let us borrow an old car they have on the lot usually, if we need a car and the repair will take longer than 2 days for free. We had to pay to have one of the borrowed cars repaired when a kid did minor damage to it. That is the total for 2 parents and 3 kids cars (we have 4 kids, but one didn't get a license until after they moved out). Just less than half that time I drove about 80 miles round trip to work. Just less than half the time I rode my bicycle to work or worked from home. Hard for me to do that math and think I would have been financially better off buying new cars. Clearly we had good luck with the cars we bought. Only 1 time did we buy a used car that we kept for less than a decade (less than a year I think) and one time a sibling gave us an old car that we gave up on after a few months. We aren't easy on cars. We spend lots of time in the mountains and canyons, road trips all over the western US... mostly on paved, but some off-road. Haul 3-4 paddleboards on the roof regularly in the warm months...