How about a mobility show, instead?

That's what the Tokyo Motor Show – which until now was like the Detroit Auto Show and the New York Auto Show – has evolved into. It sounds like a show for the latest devices to assist the handicapped and in a sense, that's just exactly what they're showing. Only it's car ownership – and driving – that's being handicapped.

"Mobility" is a term that's increasingly used by what what the car industry was – as it transitions into selling transportation as a service.

As opposed to cars – as a product.

The problem with the latter business model, of course, is that once a product is bought, it's owned. And the buyer stops paying for it.

That's a problem for the car industry, paradoxically – because most people don't need to buy a new car very often anymore, because the car industry learned how to make them run reliably for 15-20 years. This has been so since at least the mid-'90s and it's why one regularly sees cars from the '90s still in use today – almost 23 years after the end of the '90s. It is why it is possible for the average car being driven daily today to be going on 13 years old, which is remarkable if you're old enough to remember when a ten-year-old car wasn't just old but looked it and drove like it.

This writer helped his mother get a brand-new Lexus RX300 back in 1998. That Lexus is still being driven – by my niece, my mom's granddaughter, who is a freshman in college this year. It has more than 200,000 miles on the original engine – and the paint still looks almost new.