A small fleet of cars, or a fleet of small cars.

[Alpha_One]

My family has a fondness for little cars. Photographic evidence below:


Left to right: 2013 Mitsubishi Mirage MT, 1992 Daihatsu Charade MT, 2004 Honda Jazz CVT

[MetroMPG]

Nice! (And is that your puppy coming to bother the photographer? )

That Charade looks quite a bit smaller than the Mirage -- or is that a quirk of the photo? I don't believe we've ever had Daihatsu available in Canada, but I know they were sold in the U.S. for some time.

My small fleet (from my avatar):



L-R, all manual shift:
1998 Pontiac Firefly (Canadian market Chevy/Geo Metro 1.0L)
1992 Geo Metro converted to battery electric
2000 Honda Insight 1.0L hybrid

[Alpha_One]

It's a quirk of the photo. The Charade is about the same length and width as the Mirage, but the latter sits quite a bit taller and its hood is also much higher. The Jazz is slightly longer than the two other cars.

Our dog was actually sleeping under the Mirage just before I took that picture; it came out from under the car and stood where it's standing just staring at me. Looks like the dog wanted to have its picture taken too.

[MetroMPG]

How many km do you have on the Charade? And what's a typical annual distance for drivers in the Philippines?

(In Canada, 20k km is average.)

[Alpha_One]

The Charade's got just under 100,000 km on it. That sounds low because it was pretty much relegated to town driving duty (think grocery and church on Sundays) for the past 10 years or so. The air conditioning also doesn't work at the moment.

Around here, it's typical to do around 10,000km a year if the car gets driven to work every day. The Philippines isn't a very big country and being an archipelago nation, the long stretches of roads are not very long either. I personally do 10-12k annually.

[MetroMPG]

The air conditioning also doesn't work at the moment.

I imagine that would limit its use!

With low annual mileage, is it usual for your cars to last a long time?

We're subject to winter road salt in this part of the country, so regardless of mileage a lightly built car lasting past ~15 years is unusual due to corrosion. I don't think salt air from the sea is quite as damaging.

[Alpha_One]

Old cars here are quite common, especially as anti-corrosion technology advanced in the 90's which meant cars didn't rust quite so much from the salty air. It's not unusual to see late 80's Lancers and early 90's Corollas driving around the streets.

Actually, the ubiquity of old vehicles (10+ years) are due to a few factors:

• Cheap labor costs. If your car was a popular model with a healthy parts supply (e.g. any Toyota Corolla), you can have its engine rebuilt for just over US$500! A basic, non "showroom restoration" full body repair (including repainting and rust repairs) for a compact sedan will set you back just under US$1000.
• High cost of second-hand cars. A 5-year old Vios (Yaris Sedan) or Jazz (Fit) will still set you back over US$10,000 (they're around US$17k new)!
• Lax roadworthiness and emission testing and very cheap registration and insurance for old cars.

An uncle who lives in Germany asked me if the local government had a "cash-for-clunkers" program. I responded by saying "Are you joking? Cars are expensive, we keep the clunkers on the road!" Due to the above factors, 15 to 20-year old cars with newly rebuilt engines and a shiny new coat of paint are a dime a dozen around here.

That said, the past years have seen the economy expand substantially; there are now a lot of brand new cars on the streets than there were in the years prior, especially in the more affluent areas like Manila and Cebu. It also helped that car manufacturers have brought in (again) cheap, basic transportation like the Mirage or the Hyundai Eon, but there have been lots more Camrys and even Audis and BMWs now than ever as well.