How long until the new wears off

My Subaru ha 180000 km on it and it literally still has the new car smell.

 

I baby the inside of my truck but the exterior has a good amount of desert pinstriping so I'm over it.

Earlier this year I was lazy when doing a uturn on a trail and just pushed these dead trees out of the way. Armor held up of course, but a stray branch dented my tailgate and another in the front f'd up my grille surround. Its funny, I don't worry too much about trail damage but if someone opens their door into my truck I lose my shit on them.

 

Meh. A week? It's my baby, and maintenance is always top priority. A few scratches & stains give it character.

 

I was treating my truck like a newborn forever. Then I woke up one day and saw that someone had scraped my front bumper a little when they were backing out or something. After that....well, I now have tree sap in the truck bed and a few more scratches in the paint that aren't a concern for me now.

 

I could have said it better. I have a Rhino with long travel suspension and that is what I beatup on instead of my truck.
My truck is always clean.

 

Once you get some scratches on it you won't worry about it. I have a bunch of smaller scratches here and there as well as constant rock chips down low from not having my front mud flaps on that I touch up from time to time. While obviously I don't WANT new scratches it doesn't bother me when they happen. It is after all a truck. That's the one downside to buying a truck, if you're actually going to USE it it's inevitably going to get dinged or scratched.

 

I was upset when i did some damage to my truck offroading a month after i drove the truck off the lot, then i got a few chips in the hood, and now i dont really care and its been a year of owning my truck so its a whatever thing..... i think i would be pissed if i or someone put a dent in my truck though haha

 

I get to look at a chip in the windshield every day on my 2012. Had it 2 weeks when a tiny meteor fell from space.?? I don't want them to cut the factory weather stripping just yet so I deal with the safelite "repair" job. I'm still very paranoid after 4 months and 5,000 miles. Makes me really miss my 1993 some times.

 

I really worried about every little thing that happened to my 2011 when it was new. I worried about people eating in it, drinks, mud, everything. I actually washed it three days before I sold it because I cared that much.

My 2013 will get similar treatment, but i want to enjoy it as a truck. If it gets mud inside, Ill be pissed. Ill clean it and move on. As long as you take care of your cars/trucks, they'll last forever. Routine maintenance and replacing things before they fail completely will get you 300k out of these trucks. Ill still wash it once a week, wax it once a month, and clay it every 8 mo to a year. Inside, I vacuum, clean hard surfaces, and condition dash/doors/console once a week, then about every 4-6 months I get the carpets/seats shampooed and take a bottle of canned air to all the corners/crevasses. After about 5 years, I'll replace the Headlight and Taillight housings (usually when they start to get fogged up and cant be fixed as good as you'd like) with new OEM style ones, and it will look good as new.

Dents/Scratches/Dings are a part of owning a vehicle. If you take care of it, people wont see past how good the paint looks to see the small dent/ding...

A weekly wash takes no more than 10 minutes, 20 if you wax it. If you dont have 20 min a week to spare, you are doing something wrong in life and need to take a step back to evaluate where you're at...life's too short...

 

Kids and food is the hardest on my new truck. I like my 2012 alot. The thing that drives me nuts is all the crumbs that get lodged in the seat fabric. Mine has millons of holes on the seat fabric. I guess to keep you cool. The perfect size for seasame seeds to get stuck in from burger buns. Seat covers are the answer I just haven't got there yet.

 

I took care of that yesterday...

 

My truck is 4 1/2 years old and the honeymoon is most definitely over.

 

I've owned my '12 since March and it still looks and smells brand new. I'm a clean freak when it comes to vehicles so I assume it will stay that way for years. I use my trucks but always make an effort to clean them up good afterwards. I bought my '07 T4R new and it still looks as good inside and out as the day I drove it off the lot. My wife used to think I had a "problem" but slowly she's drifting over to my way of thinking on vehicle cleanliness and condition.

 

This! Except it was day 3 that i hit the trail.

 

It takes me that long to pull my car wash stuff out and get ready

 

I worry about maintaining my resale value but if I think about it I have never seen a used Tacoma for sale that was cheap. They all seem to keep their value even if they do have a few scrapes or stains.

 

Bought mine new in 2009 and I still baby it. I don't wash it as much as I'd like but all service done spot on time and completely. It's paid for and I want to make it last 300k miles or more.
I have a few dings here and there and don't worry about them. If I get a dent or fender bender I'm sure I'll have it fixed asap.

 

Drove through this the other night... around 75k on the odometer

 

Mine was a forester's work truck with 190K on the clock when I bought it. Consequently, it gets beaten like a red-headed step-child.

 

so, you are preserving your truck for the next guy?