Jack, you are so right; abuse will definitely reduce the life of your vehicle.

I used to harass a couple friends who beat the daylights out of their cars. One had gone through several engines, transmissions, and even the rear end all the while I still had all the original components in my Buick, which I regularly ran pretty hard. Sure, My Buick wouldn't get up to speed as quickly as his Chevy, but it could run at speed with it all day long.

As my dad had pointed out, there's a difference between running them hard, and abuse. When I refer to beating my truck, I just run it harder than usual. Out of all the vehicles I had, I only broke parts in one vehicle -- and AMC; which should explain why it broke.