In Japan, they actually tax you after 5 years I heard. And pretty hard. Gotta love the Toyota lobby?
A 1985 Chevy Blazer carried me through all but last year.
I inherited it, and the frugal thing seemed to be to keep driving it as long as it worked well, at the time. Well, at the time, I didn't have another option. College, cross-country, work commute, city trips, whatever.
The awesome thing was that it never stopped working well. Hundreds of thousands of miles. It can't count high enough to tell. I still have it because it costs virtually nothing to own (I rarely drive it since this year). It almost never broke down - it would just work... less, very occasionally. The first transmission shredded itself into the transmission pan going cross-country, drove back 17 hours anyway, and took 7 seconds to shift a gear, but still did it. It would be worth nothing to sell. It gets 20mpg, which is awful next to my subcompact. I have given people jumps whose cars were older than my battery, and I changed the transmission just that once, fourteen years ago. It has its 2nd carburetor but stock engine, 2nd alternator, last emissions 5 or 8 years ago was somehow on the highly clean scale. I never paid more than 1k or 2k to repair it in a year or two, excepting the one transmission.
It's a lil' rusty.