I'm engineer, married, 2 (grown up) kids, very much DIY and a bit of a carnut and lives in Denmark.
Denmark is a nice place, but car taxes are beyond imagination for most foreigners, and most Danes do therefore drive small cars and keep them running for long times despite a hostile environment with salted winter roads.
I do the 'keep the car for a long time'-thing, but I do not follow the small car trend too closely.
First car was a Citroën 2CV6 1975, bought in 1984, and we still have it and uses it !
Extremely basic and very rudimentary, but as simple as a bicycle and therefore it's possible to keep it running forever with DYI maintenance. I am in the process of getting all parts galvanized, then it really lasts forever.
Here a pic from last large service:
The XJ6 3.2 (XJ40) 1992 was my first Jaguar, bought in 2005 and still running pretty strong after having done 90.000 miles in my ownership and ODO 170.000 miles. Lovely classy and smooth ride, and it has been in use as our main car and daily driver until 2011. We still use it a lot, but less than before. Small drives in town is now done in something much smaller, economic and boring. I have been active on XJ40.com for 6-7 years now. A great site, but XJ40 only.
Here south of Milan in 2013
We found the XJ-S 1977, that we have just bought, in October last year. It drove very well, had good power and good handling.
Wife didn't like the amount of patina and especially detoriated external rubber and worn out seats, but a price reduction from the seller made us take the leap into V12 ownership.
The car had a thorough body rebuild in 1989 and in 1996 a transplant of engine, gearbox and diff from an 1989 XJ12 HE, but the rest of the car is kept preHE. Owned by same family 1987-2012 !
The reason for choosing a car this old is mainly the tax scheme in Denmark. Road tax and insurance is reduced to around 25% for cars 35+ years old. We of course also like the look and feel of an oldie like this
When I don't work on cars or my R&D job I do DIY on house, and I arrange a bicycle road race: 24 hour endurance, and most riders decide to do that solo ! http://www.melfar24.dk
