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What woman wouldn't prefer a guy who already has a hummer, and thus doesn't need any from them?

women prefer guys like me (hummer owner)

It must be painful to admit you're not attractive to women without the truck. Sorry to hear that, shorty.

I bet that's probably about right. If you exclude the number of them that are destroyed in accidents/fires/floods, etc., most modern cars last a lot longer than many people realize.

You don't see cars at the end of their lifespan in the U.S., generally, because we export them. IIRC, used cars are one of our biggest exports to Mexico and Latin America.

It would be interesting if someone wanted to trace the lifespan of an 'average vehicle' that didn't get offed by a bad driver before its time and was well maintained throughout. I suspect it's something like this:
0 - 100 miles: Test drive at factory, sitting on dealer lot.
100 - 30,000 miles: first owner, maybe on a 2 or 3 year lease.
30,000 - 150,000 miles: Second owner, or maybe multiple owners. Eventually traded in, sold to wholesaler. If still in good condition, exported.
150,000 - 300,000 miles: Mexican taxi. Parts get replaced as they wear out and break.
300,000+ miles: When body finally rusts through, strip for parts. Scrap remainder.

You don't see a ton of quarter-million-mile cars in Suburbia, USA, but in some places they're pretty desirable.

Ok, big guy.

Who's ever heard of a Prius lasting 300k miles?

I could name you at least ten people driving a GM vehicle with over 300k on it.

And the Hummer has an expected life of 300,000 miles? Oh, please. Look, my extended family has plenty of experience owning Toyotas and Nissans over the past two decades, and we have come to expect 200,000 miles or more.

Well, I can't speak for Hummers. I can't say I like them much myself. However, the 100,000 miles estimate isn't for the vehicle itself, but for the expected life-expectancy of the batteries.

Speaking of reliability, I have family members with GM cars, specifically Buick and Pontiac, which have well over 200,000 miles and are still running well. They aren't sticklers for maintenance either often going 10,000 to 15,000 miles between oil changes. There are quite a few vehicles nowadays with suggested oil change schedules in that range, but I'm talking about 10+ year old cars with 5,000 mile maintenance schedules.

These cars have had as few problems as any Japanese car I know. American automobiles had terrible reliability in the 70s and 80s but they've improved considerably. The problem is the occasional lemon and the fact that they haven't been able to change public perception.

I have a Honda myself. The real problem I see facing the American automakers is poor decision making. They seem incapable of producing the kinds of cars consumers are looking for. They also lack commitment to specific models. Instead of improving existing models and following a process of evolution they're quick to abandon what they have for something completely new. Then there's the ridiculous obsession with SUVs. They seem to exist in a vacuum. To this day they're stuck competing amongst each other instead of responding to foreign competition.

Ford introduces the new Mustang with 60's style design cues. Despite not helping Ford overall the car sells reasonably well in the short-term. Chrysler and GM see this and rush to produce their own muscle cars with classic muscle car design cues. This doesn't help these companies in any meaningful way, but they invest untold resources into these vehicles anyway. It's like they've oblivious to what the foreign competition is doing. Those are the cars the Americans should be thinking about.

The Americans have this expectation that a single vehicle will make enough of a dramatic impact that it will enable their companies to finally be successful. It's a stupid, short-sighted expectation. Something else I find funny is that the Americans need to move manufacturing overseas to be profitable while the Japanese and Europeans open new factories in the US and continue to be very successful. Of course, the Americans are crippled by unions. And that is a big hindrance to success on the part of the US automakers, but that's a whole other story. Suffice it to say that management can't be blamed for all the problems they're having.

Reliability, however, is no longer a problem with US cars. In fact, American cars have been consistently shown to be more reliable than European cars. European cars may be better designed than the American counterparts, but that doesn't make them more reliable.

I don't think hybrids are the wave of the future. They will never completely replace gasoline engines, another technology will arrive before that happens. I see hybrids merely as an overly complicated stopgap measure. They sell because it's a fad. Most people will never save enough in gasoline to make up the premium a hybrid costs over a standard model. And it's a fact that the manufacture and disposal of batteries is very polluting.

The US would be better served driving diesels. Either that or automakers should start offering the same small displacement engines offered in Europe: 1 and 1.2 liter engines. The problem is that the American public is obsessed with the size of it's automotive penis. They need to drive around in vehicles putting out 300hp and more. God forbid a car feels a little sluggish. Then there's the obsession with over-sized SUVs which is another aspect of the same problem.