How Old Is Your Car In People Years?

Like dogs and fine wine, cars age differently than humans, giving us a skewed perception of car age. But now there's a formula to tell us how old your car is in people-years.

We have to tip our hat to the folks at Blue Donut for putting together this interesting formula for determining age:

There's a simple formula for calculating this (a formula I invented). Take the mileage on the car's odometer and divide by the model year. The result is your car's age if it were a person.

Example: a 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier with 131,824 miles on it. Do the math:

131824/1994 = 66.1.

That car would be a 66 year old person.

In the case of our low-mileage Volvo from 1986 with 14,000 miles. That equates to just a touch over seven years, meaning there's a lot of life left in those wheels. What about you — how old is your car?

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Send an email to Matt Hardigree, the author of this post, at matt@jalopnik.com.

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