Is it when you no longer care how it looks and stop washing it?
Or when you perform only repairs that are necessary to keep it on the road.
How about when you're driving that POS into the ground and it's not gonna see another dime from your wallet!
Our car is 9 years old, 210,000 km on it and realistically has a ton of serviceable life left. Mechanically it's in great shape. Cosmetically, it's pretty rough. There's the typical Mazda rust showing up in the usual places, there's a large number of dings in the sheet metal courtesy of careless people. Earlier this week the wife scraped the side of the passenger door on a wall (
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://www.autos.ca/forum/Smileys/CarTalk/rolleyes.gif)
) at the mall. I didn't even bat an eye. 4 years ago I would have lost it.
So while my car isn't perfect I don't consider it to be a beater quite yet. Plus I still enjoy driving it.
How do you define a "Beater"? (Paging Arthur Dent....)