I’m not surprised. With a lot of experience with high mileage cars, performance loss seems very overrated. Like a lot of automotive myths, if it has any real basis, it probably dates back to when 100k was considered to be an achievement and well past expected EoL.

This comment is underrated!

The usual

A car sitting in a garage makes 0 horsepower.

I know between 4-5k a year isn’t exactly a ton of miles, but it seems a bit over the top to call that a “Garage Queen” with the connotations that gives. 

Yes, I went to Jiffy Lube once when I had a need to kill time and was coincidentally due for an oil change. The Jiffy Lube was right there, a block away. Two birds, one stone.

My experience has been that Jiffy and other Quick Lube places lie more than any other service department combined.

It happens at Jiffy Lube places, too. “The service schedule says your car is due for XYZ.”

I’ve made bread before, too, but I still follow a recipe.

but beep in mind the dealers and the automakers can only throw so much money at these cars from a financial perspective.

EXACTLY! Bought my tC 15 years ago from a dealer on Long Island (which contributed to my “all dealers are fucking crooks” opinion), and since it was our first new car we decided to go to the dealer to have it’s first scheduled maintenance (15k miles) done. The manual listed a few things like oil change, tire rotation,…

Good thought! I assumed it was a quick lane shift between “bear in mind” and “keep in mind”.

They are just damned popular; as much as I don’t really care for Subaru’s, the Crosstrek really has my eye; they’re small, have AWD and decent enough ground clearance to even do a moderate trail even in stock form

60-100k miles in 2 years? That’s well above the average American mileage. Most 2-year old cars would be around 30K miles.

I just decided to make a spreadsheet that calculates the mileage to my next maintenance for components, but I also change the oil with enough regularity that almost everything is based on an integer number of oil changes.

That’s when you take your user manual, go to the scheduled maintenance section and read carefully

Give me a star if when you read “beep in mind” you also looked down to assess the distance between the b and k keys.

“no longer has a published maintenance schedule”

No.

For your person going to Alaska. Grab a Subaru Crosstrek for $10-$15k (that should be 2 years old with 60-100k miles). Drive it for a year and resell it for $10-$15k. Reliable, great winter car, good MPG, and fantastic resale value which is key in your situation.