True, Robert , but that said regarding the old 100’000 mile problem with ancient cars, my son‘s 1968 Galaxy has the original paint, whereas my 1995 GMC Sierra started peeling within a year of being purchased. And everyone has heard about the truck transmissions blowing up on new GMC products. So it’s kind of a mixed bag when you think about it. In many ways, my 1958 VW Beetle was superior to a modern car because it was cheap, I could work on it, and it went over 300,000 miles before I had to rebuild the motor. and it still got 30 miles a gallon despite being designed in the 1930s. For all the smack that people talk about Ferdinand Porsche, he truly was a genius, way ahead of his time, he even designed the first hybrid automobile system. But that’s a story for another day.
"Concerns about engines crapping out – and other major mechanical failures – are largely a thing of the past"
With all due respect to Mr Farago, this is where he is 100% dead wrong. GM has over the past 20 years been hard at work proving to us just how badly they can ruin one of the best mainstream internal combustions ever made (the LS V8). They've now impressively consistently achieved sub-75k mile lifespans from a motor that at inception could knock down 300-500k rather easily.
Hyundai/Kias (with 4cyl engines) made in the last, oh, 15 years are best avoided for their propensity to blow up.
Ecoboost 4cyls.... avoid, Powershift fiasco. GM 2.4, 2.5, 3.6 oil consumption/chain stretch, 1.4T are auction poison. Honda had oil burning issues in their 3.5L VCM motors, oil dilution in the 1.5Ts. Toyota 3.5TT are knocking by 30k miles. Late model Pentastars are starting to earn a rep for headgasket failures at the used-car phase of life... etc.
No joke! Wife’s 2022 Santa Fe failed the DCT at 32K, finally came back fixed from the dealer after 104 DAYS! We put a lot of miles on the 2 loaners we were issued during the repair period.
I was about to (unfortunately) say, starting in the mid-'00s, at the behest of EPA mileage figures, the beginning of the Unreliability Era really kicked off. AFM wrecked the LS-based GM V8s, the 3V 5.4 couldn't stand an ounce of neglect while Ford's 6.0 and later 6.4 PSD's self-destructed, and the Hemi Tick made itself known. It's why I think one of the reasons that truck prices got crazy the way they did was because all the domestics basically nuked an easy 10 years of the future used truck market by poorly designing and building these powerplants.
I really like but would never own a GMT900 Silverado or Suburban (1500 levels here) with the 4.8, 5.3, or 6.0. That leaves the '900's 2500/3500 6.0L brethren (to say nothing of Duramax perils, which I am not well versed in). Finding a GMT800 in clean shape is an art as most are trashed at this point (or long have been). If one can look past the spark plug issues, the 2V and 3V 4.6s were fine in the F150s, and the V10 carried the day for the big Super Duties. And that's it. And of course, Cummins was the stalwart for Dodge while one rolled the dice with the 5.7 and avoided the 4.7 like the plague.
Shade tree mechanics are stuck with learning and dealing with the incredibly capable yet complicated next generation of trucks, or scrounging around with the rest of us for the previous era's survivors. Not "modern" and often considerably less powerful, though plenty comfortable, they do not dazzle, but rather guzzle.
Toyota even got caught in the oil consumption business with their otherwise reliable 2.4L 4's from '06-08. I don't trust a Nissan I-4 or VQ V6, as much as I love that (STOCK) 3.5L sound. Somehow I bought a Subaru with the head gasket special EJ25 (already performed!) and discovered other high mileage Subie quirks and features...too bad the darn thing is so endearing and a brilliant combination of a lot of features in a nice-to-drive package. All about the shade tree life over here, hahaha sighhhhh.....
Great post, Robert. I'd like to recommend the 066aar YouTube channel here. Great example of the shade-tree approach to car repair using modern tools and common-sense diagnostic procedures. He's also quick to call out crappy replacement parts and cars that are not built to outlive the warranty period. It's an offshoot of shango066's vintage TV and radio repair channel.
“But we are headed for a day when cars use their Über electronics to do the driving for you.”
Is that a foregone conclusion? Maybe my bias against “self driving” is coloring my opinion; but I don’t see it happening. The task is so complex that there will likely always be issues; and folks might be less accepting of those issues when there’s nobody at the controls. The Pandora’s box of liability should also have a chilling effect.
I was recently driving in a minor blizzard on a backroad in rural WI, no lines on the road visible at all, Jeep sliding around, and thought “no way a computer could do this.” Maybe I’m dumb. I don’t think I am.
It's hard enough for our brains--ostensibly supercomputers of their own...when working correctly--to decipher those conditions in real time! Even torrential rain fall + wind during highway driving is a lot to constantly evaluate.
Don't worry, the local authorities will activate the nest locks on your home to to keep you indoors in dangerous weather. No concerns about the computers driving.
Great read, Robert! I’m looking forward to many more.
Might I add however, rubber oil pump belts, Kevlar fortified or not, just don’t seem a good idea. Especially when they are buried in the block. Just one of many examples of modern engineers making some simple things worse.
Robert, I'm 60 and I don't think the bad old days are quite as bad as you're suggesting, nor are the good modern days quite as good - although I will agree that current vehicles certainly last longer. And 40k miles? Please, the standard was 80k for trade-in as no dealer would take a trade over 100k. At 80k those cars went on the secondary (and tertiary) markets and continued to be driven well over the 150k mark. We teenagers were driving 60's relics in the early 80's with no issues that a weekend with friends and beer under the shade tree couldn't fix. And those early Hondas, Toyotas, Datsuns from the 70's? Where the hell are they now? Those things rusted out instantly on the Gulf Coast. Yes they were great when new, but they certainly didn't have staying power and had their own share of problems.
I do agree that the proliferation of touch screen interfaces, electronic everything, computer control, etc. makes things infinitely better but also a hell of a lot worse when it does break. I had to have the touch screen replaced (thankfully under warranty) in my 2013 Ram after the first several years. And guess what, it took then 6 months to find one. If that replacement touch screen goes out, the truck pretty much becomes instantly worthless.
My brother was recently working on a customer's 2016 Ram with serious ABS problems that rendered the truck unsafe to drive. Due to some year-to-year revisions the ABS controller is a single-year part, and backordered seemingly indefinitely at the dealer. The solution was to buy a used part on Ebay (which thankfully worked out fine). This is not at all an uncommon scenario these days.
Like BMWs and PCV/OSV valves, new part NLA, the only choice is to rebuild (with unknown longevity of resulting rebuilt part) or find aging NOS/used on eBay and pray for the aging plastic not to fail
The "getting it from both ends" is the continuing reality that replacement parts are noticeably worse than they were, say, pre-Covid. OEM or nothing for me, more than ever. If I can source the part, that is. And if that part is not half the value of the vehicle I paid (living this reality). Kind of a nowhere to run sort of situation.
sometimes i wonder how people tolerated these kinds of problems in the first place. maybe its because they never knew any better.
people wanting the style and utility of old cars with the endless reliability of new cars and the nightmare of modern car repair and interaction probably spurred on the restomod scene
That's exactly right. The recent re-body movement is a thing mostly because now you can't run some of the new powertrains without the gauges and whatnot from the donor. So, you take an old body and staple it onto the structure of the donor.
Case in point - do we really need TPMS? I've gotten by without it for all my 50+ years, I'm not a Luddite or anything. Now that I own a 17-yr-old Toyota with this feature, I realize what a colossal waste of energy/materials/tech it is over a little bit of convenience with an extra helping of 'here's one more thing my car is going to bug me about'.
There's two kinds of TPMS - the radio frequency battery powered doodad inside a rim, and the cheaper - but functional - measurement of the ABS tone ring for a speed differential. Both alert you to a problem with a tire; one requires costly replacement (or extra expense for a dedicated set of winters).
VW's wild projections about its software-defined future from 2021 is still available online. They thought it'd be 1/3rd of revenue in 2030, along with a beautiful BEV future. VW did such a great job with its CARIAD it spent $5B to license Rivian tech.
I was car shopping in 2022 and just couldn't deal with the current gen GTI's awful capacitive touch interface - it was even worse than the rubbery manual. Went with a Honda Civic Si instead. Honda learned their lesson removing the volume knob, and the competing Civic was chock full of knobs for HVAC and Audio. The only non-button interface on the car is the required touch screen for Carplay/Android Auto. Hopefully Mazda's excellent rotary controller catches on for that, too.
"Profit and revenue pools are expected to shift gradually from internal combustion engine cars (ICEs) to battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and then to software and services, boosted by autonomous driving. The ICE market is set to decline by more than 20% over the next 10 years. In parallel, BEVs are projected to grow rapidly and overtake ICEs as a leading technology. At an estimated €1.2 trillion, by 2030, software enabled sales could add around one third on top of the expected BEV and ICE sales, more than doubling the overall mobility market from around €2 trillion today to a projected €5 trillion. Individual mobility, based on cars, is expected to still account for 85% of the market and Volkswagen’s business."
the author never drove a new car back in the day. they understeered--as cars do, to a lesser degree, today. they could lock all 4 wheels for at least one stop--braking distances were the tires' responsibility. the first car i drove--at 14--was a 2-year old caddy fastback coupe. the family never had a bit of trouble with it; traded in on a '54 packard caribbean. only trouble with that car: the lockup feature in the tranny. more cadillacs, my '53 lincoln, stude '56 golden hawk...i could go on and on. cars were driven by us to and from l.a. on route 66...including a '41 buick super convertible...comfy, quiet at 60 or 70mph when the road was straight enough. the writer makes me think of the beginning of high fuel prices where people would talk about te old days' 25 cent gas...maybe in the '30s but only in the occasional gas price war later. old ads: a '30s fullpage nash ad: "zero to eighty in three city blocks!" similar era hudson ad: "able to maintain high speeds over any kind of road!" just for fun watch the movie "speed" with james stewart and wendy barrie; there's a lot of stuff from real manufacturing proving grounds. one of my simmering gripes: the guy with the perfectly restored '49 car who says "she doesn't like to cruise at much over 55 or so" when i'd bet a box of krispy kremes it would easily reach 90mph.
If you want some time capsule gold, people have uploaded old tv broadcast car tests which appeared on West German television in the mid sixties to mid eighties timeframe to YouTube..
They measured the car's performance and used the Mercedes proving ground/test track as the test facility.
The original format was hosted/administered by Rainer Günzler until his untimely death from kidney failure in 1977. After that, the format changed a bit and it was Paul Frère doing the test driving.
Of course, it's in German, but the automatic captioning and translation work well on most of the videos.
Great recommendation. Been watching those videos on YouTube for some time, and they deserve more exposure. I especially like how each car would be brought to its top speed, and also enjoy the cold start tests where Gunzler made a big show of putting on the shearling coat.
If I remember correctly, "Pop Rythme" was the opening music for Telemotor.
At some point YouTube started putting automatic links to music used in videos in the description panel, which is super handy. For those times when a link is absent, I've had reasonable luck with Shara Music Discovery Song Finder, but feel free to use a preferred app.
I'm not sure any conversation can be had without invoking Alfred P. Sloan and his ideas that seem to be an ironically everlasting gobstopper of planned obsolescence handed down, across, and every which way across the industry and decades.
My 1970 Cougar came with the first year 351 Cleveland. Ford had such a hard time getting the blocks through QA due to the then new thinwall casting tech that they had to supplement with the 351W that was a midsize powerplant option in 69'. The 2v Cleveland in my car, replete with thinwall stuff and exciting dry intake, made 120k commuter miles when I got my mitts on it as a teen in 19diddly7. The engine was coked up around the valves so badly they were enshrouded with black towers of shale I tried to chip with a chisel. The engine smoked, mostly because the valve seals had retired to the oilpan and the valve guides were sloppy, oil drainbacks were clogged, etc.
My Dad thought it needed a rebuild. So, he sent it off. The builder said "the bottom end is fine. You can just do the heads." to which Dad said "nah, as long as it's out..."
This was not uncommon. One of the ingredients to early failures was oil and people running well or city water with high turbidity in the reservoirs in the radiators. Lots of overheating.
There's one lady with a vintage Cougar that has something like 780k miles on the 2nd engine.
Look, I get it. I've prowled enough junkyards and sat in enough traffic in the disco days and hair metal days to remember smokers and dieselers (I had to explain to my nephews that Uncle Buck's Gramma Keeth was doing something called dieseling) and bent pushrods that I get it. Everything wasn't as great. It was hampered by technology from then.
I guess we're now hampered by the tech we have. Used to be we had miles of vacuum line and now we have miles of wire.
The good old days had style and everything didn't look like a jellybean. But I think that, more than mileage, is what doomed a lot of old cars. They were passe' after a handful of years. We had shoeboxes, fins, longbois for the turnpikes, then compacts like the Euros, etc. til now. You didn't want to be uncool with an old Studebaker Lark when everything was "personal luxury" and that (and miles) turned a lot of cars into "fishing cars" sold on a used lot's death row.
Now it's becoming tough to tell what's 10 years old from what's new. I have a 10 year old VW and it could be a new car. By 1974, the Cougar I had was a coke bottle sided mod era car made old timey by the new models that were land yachts or the new compacts that were fuel sippers.
I bought a '67 Valiant with the 170 slant six as my first foray into older cars about a decade or so ago for $1,000. Had a young family at the time and my kids loved going for rides in the sedan. Started right up every time and never gave me any issues. Got bored with it and sold it a few years later to another guy with young kids for $1,300.
Oh yeah, those Valiants were great cars. The slant six (I had the 225) might not have been the fastest or any of that, but they were dependable and easy to work on.
Time to combine the best of the old and the best of the new.
Use modern metallurgy and robotic assembly techniques, along with the latest FEM and CFD software, to design & build cars powered by NA MPFI engines, monitored by electromechanical gauges and built to 1990s Lexus quality standards, with manual seats, door locks & windows.
"Use modern metallurgy and robotic assembly techniques, along with the latest FEM and CFD software, to design & build cars powered by NA MPFI engines ..."
Yes!
"... monitored by electromechanical gauges and built to 1990s Lexus quality standards ..."
Robert gee what a nattering nabob of negativity… most mechanical devices need regular maintenance. Anyone can take any car/suv/truck and run it in the ground. Granted motors and transmissions of yesterday were simpler and designed to be repaired. Yes oils have been remarkably improved over the SAE 30 weight used in most cars 50 years . However if you look around at any classic car auction or club event you will see countless original cars still going strong 40-50-60 years later, and I am talking bout original cars not restored cars. It all depended on how the car was treated thought it life, not the car itself. Yes cars rusted but a lot did not, yes cars broke down but most did not. Yes you could get in your 1965 Chevy Impala Wagon and drive from Chicago to LA on Rt 66 just as well as you could take you 2024 Chevy Surburban. Happy Motoring….
In 1989, I worked at a dealership that sold Hondas and Saabs, among other new car brands. There wasn't even an employee purchase program for Saabs, because nobody who saw them lined up for repairs every day in greater numbers than the Oldsmobiles and Hondas that outsold them by more than twenty to one wanted to even stand close to one.
True, Robert , but that said regarding the old 100’000 mile problem with ancient cars, my son‘s 1968 Galaxy has the original paint, whereas my 1995 GMC Sierra started peeling within a year of being purchased. And everyone has heard about the truck transmissions blowing up on new GMC products. So it’s kind of a mixed bag when you think about it. In many ways, my 1958 VW Beetle was superior to a modern car because it was cheap, I could work on it, and it went over 300,000 miles before I had to rebuild the motor. and it still got 30 miles a gallon despite being designed in the 1930s. For all the smack that people talk about Ferdinand Porsche, he truly was a genius, way ahead of his time, he even designed the first hybrid automobile system. But that’s a story for another day.
"Concerns about engines crapping out – and other major mechanical failures – are largely a thing of the past"
With all due respect to Mr Farago, this is where he is 100% dead wrong. GM has over the past 20 years been hard at work proving to us just how badly they can ruin one of the best mainstream internal combustions ever made (the LS V8). They've now impressively consistently achieved sub-75k mile lifespans from a motor that at inception could knock down 300-500k rather easily.
Hyundai/Kias (with 4cyl engines) made in the last, oh, 15 years are best avoided for their propensity to blow up.
Ecoboost 4cyls.... avoid, Powershift fiasco. GM 2.4, 2.5, 3.6 oil consumption/chain stretch, 1.4T are auction poison. Honda had oil burning issues in their 3.5L VCM motors, oil dilution in the 1.5Ts. Toyota 3.5TT are knocking by 30k miles. Late model Pentastars are starting to earn a rep for headgasket failures at the used-car phase of life... etc.
Hyundai/Kia DCTs are nothing to write home about either.
No joke! Wife’s 2022 Santa Fe failed the DCT at 32K, finally came back fixed from the dealer after 104 DAYS! We put a lot of miles on the 2 loaners we were issued during the repair period.
Yeah, they do sit at the dealerships for quite a while waiting for engines/transmissions.
I was about to (unfortunately) say, starting in the mid-'00s, at the behest of EPA mileage figures, the beginning of the Unreliability Era really kicked off. AFM wrecked the LS-based GM V8s, the 3V 5.4 couldn't stand an ounce of neglect while Ford's 6.0 and later 6.4 PSD's self-destructed, and the Hemi Tick made itself known. It's why I think one of the reasons that truck prices got crazy the way they did was because all the domestics basically nuked an easy 10 years of the future used truck market by poorly designing and building these powerplants.
I really like but would never own a GMT900 Silverado or Suburban (1500 levels here) with the 4.8, 5.3, or 6.0. That leaves the '900's 2500/3500 6.0L brethren (to say nothing of Duramax perils, which I am not well versed in). Finding a GMT800 in clean shape is an art as most are trashed at this point (or long have been). If one can look past the spark plug issues, the 2V and 3V 4.6s were fine in the F150s, and the V10 carried the day for the big Super Duties. And that's it. And of course, Cummins was the stalwart for Dodge while one rolled the dice with the 5.7 and avoided the 4.7 like the plague.
Shade tree mechanics are stuck with learning and dealing with the incredibly capable yet complicated next generation of trucks, or scrounging around with the rest of us for the previous era's survivors. Not "modern" and often considerably less powerful, though plenty comfortable, they do not dazzle, but rather guzzle.
Toyota even got caught in the oil consumption business with their otherwise reliable 2.4L 4's from '06-08. I don't trust a Nissan I-4 or VQ V6, as much as I love that (STOCK) 3.5L sound. Somehow I bought a Subaru with the head gasket special EJ25 (already performed!) and discovered other high mileage Subie quirks and features...too bad the darn thing is so endearing and a brilliant combination of a lot of features in a nice-to-drive package. All about the shade tree life over here, hahaha sighhhhh.....
Great post, Robert. I'd like to recommend the 066aar YouTube channel here. Great example of the shade-tree approach to car repair using modern tools and common-sense diagnostic procedures. He's also quick to call out crappy replacement parts and cars that are not built to outlive the warranty period. It's an offshoot of shango066's vintage TV and radio repair channel.
You had me until this:
“But we are headed for a day when cars use their Über electronics to do the driving for you.”
Is that a foregone conclusion? Maybe my bias against “self driving” is coloring my opinion; but I don’t see it happening. The task is so complex that there will likely always be issues; and folks might be less accepting of those issues when there’s nobody at the controls. The Pandora’s box of liability should also have a chilling effect.
I was recently driving in a minor blizzard on a backroad in rural WI, no lines on the road visible at all, Jeep sliding around, and thought “no way a computer could do this.” Maybe I’m dumb. I don’t think I am.
You don’t sound dumb to me.
I keep waiting to see one of those autonomous car in those conditions. The computer would be completely baffled.
It's hard enough for our brains--ostensibly supercomputers of their own...when working correctly--to decipher those conditions in real time! Even torrential rain fall + wind during highway driving is a lot to constantly evaluate.
Don't worry, the local authorities will activate the nest locks on your home to to keep you indoors in dangerous weather. No concerns about the computers driving.
Great read, Robert! I’m looking forward to many more.
Might I add however, rubber oil pump belts, Kevlar fortified or not, just don’t seem a good idea. Especially when they are buried in the block. Just one of many examples of modern engineers making some simple things worse.
Robert, I'm 60 and I don't think the bad old days are quite as bad as you're suggesting, nor are the good modern days quite as good - although I will agree that current vehicles certainly last longer. And 40k miles? Please, the standard was 80k for trade-in as no dealer would take a trade over 100k. At 80k those cars went on the secondary (and tertiary) markets and continued to be driven well over the 150k mark. We teenagers were driving 60's relics in the early 80's with no issues that a weekend with friends and beer under the shade tree couldn't fix. And those early Hondas, Toyotas, Datsuns from the 70's? Where the hell are they now? Those things rusted out instantly on the Gulf Coast. Yes they were great when new, but they certainly didn't have staying power and had their own share of problems.
I do agree that the proliferation of touch screen interfaces, electronic everything, computer control, etc. makes things infinitely better but also a hell of a lot worse when it does break. I had to have the touch screen replaced (thankfully under warranty) in my 2013 Ram after the first several years. And guess what, it took then 6 months to find one. If that replacement touch screen goes out, the truck pretty much becomes instantly worthless.
My brother was recently working on a customer's 2016 Ram with serious ABS problems that rendered the truck unsafe to drive. Due to some year-to-year revisions the ABS controller is a single-year part, and backordered seemingly indefinitely at the dealer. The solution was to buy a used part on Ebay (which thankfully worked out fine). This is not at all an uncommon scenario these days.
Like BMWs and PCV/OSV valves, new part NLA, the only choice is to rebuild (with unknown longevity of resulting rebuilt part) or find aging NOS/used on eBay and pray for the aging plastic not to fail
The "getting it from both ends" is the continuing reality that replacement parts are noticeably worse than they were, say, pre-Covid. OEM or nothing for me, more than ever. If I can source the part, that is. And if that part is not half the value of the vehicle I paid (living this reality). Kind of a nowhere to run sort of situation.
The New York Times link looks suspiciously like the Wall Street Journal.
sometimes i wonder how people tolerated these kinds of problems in the first place. maybe its because they never knew any better.
people wanting the style and utility of old cars with the endless reliability of new cars and the nightmare of modern car repair and interaction probably spurred on the restomod scene
That's exactly right. The recent re-body movement is a thing mostly because now you can't run some of the new powertrains without the gauges and whatnot from the donor. So, you take an old body and staple it onto the structure of the donor.
Case in point - do we really need TPMS? I've gotten by without it for all my 50+ years, I'm not a Luddite or anything. Now that I own a 17-yr-old Toyota with this feature, I realize what a colossal waste of energy/materials/tech it is over a little bit of convenience with an extra helping of 'here's one more thing my car is going to bug me about'.
There's two kinds of TPMS - the radio frequency battery powered doodad inside a rim, and the cheaper - but functional - measurement of the ABS tone ring for a speed differential. Both alert you to a problem with a tire; one requires costly replacement (or extra expense for a dedicated set of winters).
About an hour after this was posted my f150 is dead, a no crank situation, everything else fine, battery replacement no help.
$400 in and it isn't even on the lift yet!
Try pouring blinker fluid into the flux modulator.
VW's wild projections about its software-defined future from 2021 is still available online. They thought it'd be 1/3rd of revenue in 2030, along with a beautiful BEV future. VW did such a great job with its CARIAD it spent $5B to license Rivian tech.
I was car shopping in 2022 and just couldn't deal with the current gen GTI's awful capacitive touch interface - it was even worse than the rubbery manual. Went with a Honda Civic Si instead. Honda learned their lesson removing the volume knob, and the competing Civic was chock full of knobs for HVAC and Audio. The only non-button interface on the car is the required touch screen for Carplay/Android Auto. Hopefully Mazda's excellent rotary controller catches on for that, too.
"Profit and revenue pools are expected to shift gradually from internal combustion engine cars (ICEs) to battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and then to software and services, boosted by autonomous driving. The ICE market is set to decline by more than 20% over the next 10 years. In parallel, BEVs are projected to grow rapidly and overtake ICEs as a leading technology. At an estimated €1.2 trillion, by 2030, software enabled sales could add around one third on top of the expected BEV and ICE sales, more than doubling the overall mobility market from around €2 trillion today to a projected €5 trillion. Individual mobility, based on cars, is expected to still account for 85% of the market and Volkswagen’s business."
https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/press-releases/new-auto-volkswagen-group-set-to-unleash-value-in-battery-electric-autonomous-mobility-world-16769
the author never drove a new car back in the day. they understeered--as cars do, to a lesser degree, today. they could lock all 4 wheels for at least one stop--braking distances were the tires' responsibility. the first car i drove--at 14--was a 2-year old caddy fastback coupe. the family never had a bit of trouble with it; traded in on a '54 packard caribbean. only trouble with that car: the lockup feature in the tranny. more cadillacs, my '53 lincoln, stude '56 golden hawk...i could go on and on. cars were driven by us to and from l.a. on route 66...including a '41 buick super convertible...comfy, quiet at 60 or 70mph when the road was straight enough. the writer makes me think of the beginning of high fuel prices where people would talk about te old days' 25 cent gas...maybe in the '30s but only in the occasional gas price war later. old ads: a '30s fullpage nash ad: "zero to eighty in three city blocks!" similar era hudson ad: "able to maintain high speeds over any kind of road!" just for fun watch the movie "speed" with james stewart and wendy barrie; there's a lot of stuff from real manufacturing proving grounds. one of my simmering gripes: the guy with the perfectly restored '49 car who says "she doesn't like to cruise at much over 55 or so" when i'd bet a box of krispy kremes it would easily reach 90mph.
If you want some time capsule gold, people have uploaded old tv broadcast car tests which appeared on West German television in the mid sixties to mid eighties timeframe to YouTube..
They measured the car's performance and used the Mercedes proving ground/test track as the test facility.
The original format was hosted/administered by Rainer Günzler until his untimely death from kidney failure in 1977. After that, the format changed a bit and it was Paul Frère doing the test driving.
Of course, it's in German, but the automatic captioning and translation work well on most of the videos.
Links, if substack permits:
https://www.youtube.com/@7Freitage/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@GermanSeatFan/videos
Names of channels, if substack refuses: 7Freitage, GermanCarFan
I highly recommend everyone watch at least one of each. If you agree with my assessment, spread the word.
Cheers and God bless.
Great recommendation. Been watching those videos on YouTube for some time, and they deserve more exposure. I especially like how each car would be brought to its top speed, and also enjoy the cold start tests where Gunzler made a big show of putting on the shearling coat.
Yes, the "IKEA Monkey" moment in the proceedings.
Since I'm commenting again, I'll mention how those videos are an incidental treasure trove of vintage jazz, pop and "library" music.
A good example of the last:
https://youtu.be/_GfWPXkvLsM?si=rdy5sM7CW91Nx16y
If I remember correctly, "Pop Rythme" was the opening music for Telemotor.
At some point YouTube started putting automatic links to music used in videos in the description panel, which is super handy. For those times when a link is absent, I've had reasonable luck with Shara Music Discovery Song Finder, but feel free to use a preferred app.
Anyway, cheers and enjoy.
Neat piece. Thanks for taking the time.
I'm not sure any conversation can be had without invoking Alfred P. Sloan and his ideas that seem to be an ironically everlasting gobstopper of planned obsolescence handed down, across, and every which way across the industry and decades.
My 1970 Cougar came with the first year 351 Cleveland. Ford had such a hard time getting the blocks through QA due to the then new thinwall casting tech that they had to supplement with the 351W that was a midsize powerplant option in 69'. The 2v Cleveland in my car, replete with thinwall stuff and exciting dry intake, made 120k commuter miles when I got my mitts on it as a teen in 19diddly7. The engine was coked up around the valves so badly they were enshrouded with black towers of shale I tried to chip with a chisel. The engine smoked, mostly because the valve seals had retired to the oilpan and the valve guides were sloppy, oil drainbacks were clogged, etc.
My Dad thought it needed a rebuild. So, he sent it off. The builder said "the bottom end is fine. You can just do the heads." to which Dad said "nah, as long as it's out..."
This was not uncommon. One of the ingredients to early failures was oil and people running well or city water with high turbidity in the reservoirs in the radiators. Lots of overheating.
There's one lady with a vintage Cougar that has something like 780k miles on the 2nd engine.
Look, I get it. I've prowled enough junkyards and sat in enough traffic in the disco days and hair metal days to remember smokers and dieselers (I had to explain to my nephews that Uncle Buck's Gramma Keeth was doing something called dieseling) and bent pushrods that I get it. Everything wasn't as great. It was hampered by technology from then.
I guess we're now hampered by the tech we have. Used to be we had miles of vacuum line and now we have miles of wire.
The good old days had style and everything didn't look like a jellybean. But I think that, more than mileage, is what doomed a lot of old cars. They were passe' after a handful of years. We had shoeboxes, fins, longbois for the turnpikes, then compacts like the Euros, etc. til now. You didn't want to be uncool with an old Studebaker Lark when everything was "personal luxury" and that (and miles) turned a lot of cars into "fishing cars" sold on a used lot's death row.
Now it's becoming tough to tell what's 10 years old from what's new. I have a 10 year old VW and it could be a new car. By 1974, the Cougar I had was a coke bottle sided mod era car made old timey by the new models that were land yachts or the new compacts that were fuel sippers.
I had a '73 dodge dart with the slant six. That thing was virtually indestructible and I had 0 problems with driving it cross country.
I bought a '67 Valiant with the 170 slant six as my first foray into older cars about a decade or so ago for $1,000. Had a young family at the time and my kids loved going for rides in the sedan. Started right up every time and never gave me any issues. Got bored with it and sold it a few years later to another guy with young kids for $1,300.
Oh yeah, those Valiants were great cars. The slant six (I had the 225) might not have been the fastest or any of that, but they were dependable and easy to work on.
Time to combine the best of the old and the best of the new.
Use modern metallurgy and robotic assembly techniques, along with the latest FEM and CFD software, to design & build cars powered by NA MPFI engines, monitored by electromechanical gauges and built to 1990s Lexus quality standards, with manual seats, door locks & windows.
"Use modern metallurgy and robotic assembly techniques, along with the latest FEM and CFD software, to design & build cars powered by NA MPFI engines ..."
Yes!
"... monitored by electromechanical gauges and built to 1990s Lexus quality standards ..."
That's right!
"... with manual seats, door locks & windows."
Hold up ...
Robert gee what a nattering nabob of negativity… most mechanical devices need regular maintenance. Anyone can take any car/suv/truck and run it in the ground. Granted motors and transmissions of yesterday were simpler and designed to be repaired. Yes oils have been remarkably improved over the SAE 30 weight used in most cars 50 years . However if you look around at any classic car auction or club event you will see countless original cars still going strong 40-50-60 years later, and I am talking bout original cars not restored cars. It all depended on how the car was treated thought it life, not the car itself. Yes cars rusted but a lot did not, yes cars broke down but most did not. Yes you could get in your 1965 Chevy Impala Wagon and drive from Chicago to LA on Rt 66 just as well as you could take you 2024 Chevy Surburban. Happy Motoring….
Funny, I had a 77 Saab GL, traded it in for an 81 Honda Accord 4 door. For basically the same reasons.
In 1989, I worked at a dealership that sold Hondas and Saabs, among other new car brands. There wasn't even an employee purchase program for Saabs, because nobody who saw them lined up for repairs every day in greater numbers than the Oldsmobiles and Hondas that outsold them by more than twenty to one wanted to even stand close to one.