February 27, 2017
Interview with Jack Gillis, author of the book The Car Book 2017
Mike Carruthers:
Cars have really changed over the last several years.
Jack Gillis:
Well I think there are 3 really big changes. First of all automobiles are far safer, they’re much more fuel efficient than they were and the most important thing is they last longer.
Jack Gillis, author of the book The Car Book 2017…
Cars are better built and you can easily expect a new car to last 150,000-200,000 miles – which certainly wasn’t the case 15 years ago.
Car maintenance has gotten a lot better.
Either you have a catastrophic problem or you can easily run that car for 60,000-70,000 miles without any major repairs. One of the problems with that is you tend to overlook some of the PM (the preventative maintenance) tasks. Such as it’s still really important to change the oil on a regular basis but if your car keeps running beautifully you think to yourself, “Gee I’m not going to do that.”
Fuel efficiency is always important and something Jack has worked a lot on.
I worked very hard with the previous administration to put in to place fuel economy standards which would require vehicles on the average to get 40 miles per gallon by 2025. And so far the manufacturers have done an excellent job in complying with that standard which is being phased in over time.