It was interesting because that Jetta was in the family since new, and it had almost zero problems until it hit 140.000 miles, at which point it suddenly seemed to spend time at garage every other week. I changed pretty much every wearing part from shocks to clutch and brakes, but still it might just die on me due to fuel lines having been dried so the rubber just broke up, and we got rid of it. Had no A/C either, that was a good reason to dump it too.

I guess the car had a planned lasting time of about 140k-ml.

Many people refuse to acknowledge it, but all cars have their planned duration times...for instance, in Japan I understand it's really difficult and expensive to have older cars, because the law mandates some major repairs (I dunno, change airbags at 5 years???) or something like that, and it's quite cheap to buy new cars, so as a result there are hardly any cars there older than 5 years. Maybe Syo can confirm is this is right. Thus most cars sold in Japan are planned so that they last for 5 years and how much is expected in mileage during that time. It's amazing to Japanese car people to learn that the average car here is around 11 years old. Hell, I have never bought a car younger than 6 years myself :-)