These are the top 10 worst car owner mistakes - and if you manage not to do them, buying and owning a car will get a lot easier.

1. Post-purchase research syndrome. My inbox cries me a river on this. People do it all the time, and it’s just nuts. Good safety tip: Buying a car always works better when research pre-dates purchase.

2. Fixing non-problems. If your car does not have a problem, don’t go looking for one, and definitely don’t fix it. Try manifesting a state of happiness. Contentment. Don’t stress - I’m sure something else will go wrong soon.

3. The blame game. If you damage the car, you know, if you leave it parked in the ocean, just for one night, it’s really not the carmaker’s problem. They’ll fix it for you, in exchange for money, if possible. Or you could talk to your insurance company, depending on the circumstances. That seems fair.

4. Service. The fact that service intervals are commonly 12 months and 15,000 kilometres is exceptional. A testament to brilliant engineering - in particular chemical engineering of synthetic oil. Some people, however, still want to stretch the boundaries. You need to realise that servicing is a contract between you and the carmaker. If you breach that contract by not getting the car serviced according to the schedule, you void the warranty.

5. Entropy. Entropy works on your car continuously, undoing its precision over time and distance. Making it more random. So, don’t complain when you get 160,000 kilometres down the track and the transmission makes a mess in its trousers. It’s a miracle that it managed four laps of the earth, reliably.

6. Modifications. Modifications will void your warranty. This means - buy a vehicle that does what you want, standard. In the case of something like the Ranger, is there some job that you need it to do, where the standard 470 Newton-metres is really not likely to be sufficient? Does it really need that performance chip?

7. Wars of attrition. I get people all the time - they’ve been at war with Ford or Jeep or Volkswagen or Holden (ie - the biggest dog brands) for five, maybe six years. But there gets to a point where the tough love ownership conclusion is: Get rid of it; it’s a shitbox, don’t buy another Ford, ever, and buy something decent, that won’t be a disproportionate source of angst in your life.

8. Metadata Monkies. People always say to me: ‘I’ve had a Captiva for five years. Best car I’ve ever owned.’ Like that. To these passionate correspondents, I would say: Nice metadata analysis. Buying a car is - in part - about the management of risk. And one of the key risks - the hardest one to get good advice on, incidentally, is to avoid owning a car that is an unreliable shitheap, from a carmaker that will leave you out in the cold if you have a problem.

9. Cheapskates. Look - if you have a problem: a) take it to the dealer, and if you get brushed, b) take it to the carmaker, and if you get brushed, c) next stop - get advice from your own solicitor. Pay for it.
Don’t be a cheapskate here because you can bet the dealer and the carmaker know how to play this game. Level the damn playing field.

10. Infosluts. My strong advice to you is: Don’t be an infoslut. Finding reviews is clearly not a problem. Finding good ones is. If you read everything you can, without culling the crap reviews and the reviewers who are either incompetent or bent over, you’ll just end up in a black hole - a bottomless vortex of car-buying confusion.