When my car needs a repair I just donate it to charity and buy another one that runs!
Well, not exactly, not always, but sort of. When our son got his license we paid $2000 for a used Saab with 120k miles that was in pretty decent shape. The plan - which worked - was with the exception of routine maintenance limited pretty much to oil changes, to drive it into the ground. OK, I did very reluctantly replace the muffler at one point.
Thanks, you made me smile and fondly remember my departed, wonderful, and deeply influential step father. He was the real deal, long before blogs like this. In fact, he would of found 95% of this blog to be a ridiculous exercise in stating the obvious. He followed your "drive it into the ground" protocol, all of his life.
One day, as an older teen, I asked to borrow his old, high miles Olds. I couldn't start it, and asked if he had any idea why. He then gave me the usual, "Jesus, we just can't have nice things with you around, what did you do to it this time?". I then pushed it down the street to a local mechanic. In a few minutes the guy said, " this old heap is too worn out to even suck gas into the carb. Tell you dad it's time". With this guy's professional blessing, it was final time to stop beating the dead horse, and find a new one.
My mom got so tired of driving a totally clapped out 67' VW bug that she took it to the inspection station and told the owner " you NEED to find a problem with this car. A problem that not only causes it to fail inspection, but is so expensive to repair that it will be best to leave it here for the junkyard to pick up. If you won't do that for me, after all the years of me driving, and you patching this POS, I'll find another garage"
LOL, that's growing up MMM style in the 70's............