They don't make cars like they used to ~ I'm glad to say!
Give me a fuel-injected, electronically ignitioned, airconditioned, reliable, durable, well-equipped, economical, good power output, oiltight, watertight, rainproof, modern car any day. (And aren't those plastic engine covers just great for making the engine look neat and clean.)
I remember cars 20-40 years that I wouldn't give garage room to now. Cars that had 30 grease nipples that had to be greased every 3000 miles, spark plugs that had to have the gap adjusted every 2500 miles and had to be replaced every 5000 miles, engines that were difficult to start no matter what time of year it was and which stalled at the slightest provocation, front wheels that were literally impossible to balance, windscreens that leaked rain and which were impossible to cure, bodywork that rusted so quick that you were lucky if the car passed it's first MOT, engines and engine bays covered in oil/dirt etc etc, and 0-60mph times measured in minutes.
The good old days ~ I don't think so!
--
L'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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The only way to consider a car now is as a white good, like a washing machine. Very good at its job while it works, but too expensive to fix when it gets a few years old and something major goes bang. So throw it away and get another. Or do as Aprilia suggests and get something a little bit older and well made than you can still mend.
I like very old cars (30 years plus) and they can make sense for local runabouts if you are mechanically minded and carry out regular preventative maintenance.
For a 'modern', buy the most reliable you can find, which means Japanese, and run it until you get bored.
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I think Nick has summed it up - there are two extremes, good old and good new, and they are better at different jobs.
My observations about old cars is that they are much more variable in their characteristics than modern ones. All modern cars are pretty reliable, pretty fast, and pretty difficult to fix when they start getting old.
Some old cars are awful. Hard to start, slow, dirty, poor roadholding, uncomfortable to drive, noisy, draughty, etc. But some are not like that.
I am always plugging Triumph 2000s, but there must be lots of others for which this is true too. I have had one for 8 years, used daily as a second car. It is fast, comfortable, has good roadholding, always starts first shot even in the cold and damp, and is easy to work on or service.
It has never been restored, just used every day for the last 40 years. Anyone care to nominate a modern car they would rely on for the next 40 years?
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I don't know, My car is a 'T' reg so not very old and I find it fine to service and repair myself (not that a lots gone wrong). Of course if something in the engine management went then it would be a trip to the garage but how often do you see problems with that?
Are modern cars harder to maintain at home or is it just that we're unwilling to learn how to do it?
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So, Luddism is still alive and kicking then...
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Like Cliff, I have an older car that I would be perfectly happy to drive everyday for some very good reasons.
Firstly, mechanical simplicity, it's carbs not injection, all mechanical linkages, no traction control, abs, pas, etc, etc. The electrics are easy to understand, the worst thing you are going to encounter is a mechanical relay. If the car doesn't start it's the ignition circuit and nothing but the ignition circuit not some faulty ECU sensor continually overriding the 'brain'.
Engines are much simpler affairs to work on, engine bays tend to be larger. You listen to the engine for knocks and ticks to pick up potential faults. Depending on what you buy, handling isn't masked by PAS, suspension tends to be easier to understand and also feel.
In terms of everyday maintenance, my older car is 31 years old, it has one grease nipple that needs checking every 2,000 miles and it's easy to find and rarely need more than a dab of grease.
Oil changes are regular but that's out of choice. I can actually service the car myself (I'm no grease monkey by a long, long way) and I've never had to adjust spark plug gaps. All the consumables just seem much more durable, light bulbs, brake pads, air filters. Even rubber pipes are thicker and more durable as a result. Basically, most older cars are much more highly engineered, real nuts and bolts rather than plastic push plugs etc, etc.
Even simple things like a window winder mechanism is all metal with no plastic to stress and snap.
And if you've ever driven a car with no cat, you appreciate real HP not smothered. Economy isn't bad; I get nearly 23 mpg from a V8 now I've had both carbs serviced.
Car's today lasting 40 years? Hmm, depends if they are going to keep software for that long, I can't see all the computerised bits lasting 40 years without someone willing to keep manufacturing the spares and servicing circuit boards. They are not the kind of spares that lend themselves to the quinessential classic car cottage industry that we have today.
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I don't know, My car is a 'T' reg so not very old and I find it fine to service and repair myself (not that a lots gone wrong). Of course if something in the engine management went then it would be a trip to the garage but how often do you see problems with that? Are modern cars harder to maintain at home or is it just that we're unwilling to learn how to do it?
Most modern cars are actually dead easy to service at home - it basically comes down to oil change and oil/fuel/air filters. Check brake pads. Change sparks and brake fluid every now and again.
Most dealers will charge you £150+ for simple service.
The problems comes when something goes wrong with the more complex parts of the car ABS/Airbag/powertrain management. Most dealers seem a bit clueless when asked to do anything other than routine servicing. Then they start swapping out parts at the owners expense. The manfr. charges a fortune for the parts, so 6-year old car with EMS fault becomes almost an economic 'write-off'.
I speak here as someone who has worked in the business and written and delivered training material for manfrs. and dealer groups.
In my view there is a market for more basic and reliable cars. Also the manufacturers should be 'encouraged' to incorporate more self-diagnostics into their systems - with simple fault decoding and communication to the users (e.g. 2x 7 segment displays next to the EOBD connector which display a range of basic fault codes. Processing power and memory is now so cheap that there is no excuse for not incorporating this (most of the work has been done anyway, to make the systems EOBDII compliant).
The Japanese tend to go half-way there with flash-codes, but there is still scope to take things further.
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I agree 100% Aprilia : these days I think my background in electronic system design is more use for car fault finding than my 'ability' to pick up the right end of a spanner ( or 18 inch stilson ;-).
From a personal perspective then I think late eigties cars generally have the best compromise between relaibility & complexity, before the wholesale addition of lambda sensors, closed loop engine management etc. etc.
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I'm with L'escargot. Give me a modern car with aircon, central locking, electric windows, good handling and roadholding, a decent set of airbags and a scientifically designed safety cell. Comfortable, convenient, good to drive and safe, especially in the accident caused by someone else.
Heavy old Merc, for example, is VFM and reliable, but I'd say not as good to drive or as safe.
BTW, have you noticed how folk, including motoring journos, go all misty eyed over MGs like the B and Midget and Triumph Spitfires? But I remember CAR magazine in the 70s rubbishing all that stuff in favour of fine handling, sweet engined, hugely rewarding Fiats, Alfas and Lancias (rustbuckets of coure, but so were most cars). I can't believe that these sad old Brit motors are any better now, in retrospect, than they were then.
Forget the past. Move with the times.
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Talking of old rubbish, I saw an Allegro Vanden Plas the other day...
Probably owned by someone 900yrs old who keeps saying "Ee, they don't make 'em like they used to"...
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Aprilia. As you say the cost of computer and other electronic components are so cheap nowadays possibly because of cloning by the Chinese and others. Any ideas of why this hasn?t been the same for electronics for cars.
Some of the prices quoted on this site for replacement electronic parts seems to be unreal and appears to be the only items which maintain this.
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I agree with Mad Maxy, that cars around the late 80's were the best compromise. Most makes had sorted out the rust problems, and got the engines running reliably thanks to fuel injection and better ignition. But the electronics to control this was simple due to the lack of feedback loop required with a lambda sensor and cat you get in modern cars. The lack of feedback also exposed potential engine problems far better, so identifying faults was easier. Though I think engine bay layouts around that era did start to get more awkward as they started to cram more into smaller spaces.
I've got a electronic engineering background so I find dealing with fuel injectors easier to understand than carbs, so I'm not scared of most problems. However I do think some aspects of car technology is getting too complex for its own good. I recently drove a new 406 where the lights and so on are controlled by a CAN (I think its called this) system where a signal is sent along a common bus to tell which light (or whatever) to turn on or off. The trouble with this is there is a delay involved; so you flash the headlights and about 10 minutes later it actually happens. Its very annoying, if not a little dangerous. I would also think fault finding would be quite difficult if there was a problem, or if the controller did go wrong, all the lights would go bonkers. The only advantage I see is from a manufacturing point of view it is easier to fit a single common bus of wires around the car than a complex loom. I expect they also make a pretty penny from spares and repair.
I think the exborbitant prices of car electronic spares (e.g £100s for an ECU) is their way of making money. Ensure the diagnostic tools are only for dealers who can charge lots of labour for the work and charge for replacement parts rather than trying to fix them. Electronic devices should be far more reliable than mechanical devices, however Joe Public is tricked into thinking the opposite and will accept the dealers tactics of replacing expensive working electronic parts without finding the true fault which might just be a dirty connector or a bashed sensor.
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"In my view there is a market for more basic and reliable cars"
Quite agree, but it probably won't happen here, because of all the regulation. It will happen in China, though, from where we might be able to import a few...
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But this always leads back to the question of who would buy a horribly basic car with nothing to go wrong?
I know I wouldn't, neither would any of the drivers who I know.
Anyway, if you feel forced into buing a modern car with all of these toys to go wrong, and the PAS/central locking/heated seats or whatever else stops working, then just don't fix it! The car will still work, just without the modern toy.
The only thing that I can think of where this doesn't apply would be with an ECU fault which would immobilise the car, fortunately I don't believe these fail regularly enough to justify reviving the Allegro or some equally ancient car design. ;-)
Blue
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"..then just don't fix it!"
Bit tricky if the central locking packs up...
I take your overall point, but a modern 'basic' vehicle wouldn't necessarily be another Allegro - at least, I hope not!
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I don't think most people realise the complexity of some modern cars. Just before Christmas I was at a meeting at a large German electronics company who supply components to Jaguar (no, doesn't start with a 'B'!).
I was speaking to one of their engineers about the Jag. The guy was telling me it has about 40 microprocessors on board and three bus systems; with 'bridges' between the busses.
The car has more computing power than a Space Shuttle.
The *price* of electronic/electrical spare parts is unrelated to the *cost*. Back in 1995 I was negotiating the price of some parts for a new Rover model. The price of an ABS wheel speed sensor was about the same as a pint of beer - they cost a bit more than that as a spare from the dealer! The argument with spares has always been that you are paying for the spare 'to be available' (i.e. the logistics of packaging, cataloging, distribution etc. etc.) and not the spare part itself.
A modern 'basic' car could be quite good; light, with good handling, a rust-free bodyshell, a simple injection system. A modern 'Alfasud' is what we need. Wind-up windows, no CL, no PAS and no climate control!
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I was speaking to one of their engineers about the Jag. The guy was telling me it has about 40 microprocessors on board and three bus systems; with 'bridges' between the busses.
But 'so what'? Why is this complicated? My PC at home has numerous seperate processors onboard, various bridges linking high speed bus systems, and I built the whole lot myself. I'd wager that the dual core processor or 8800GTX graphics card in my PC is perhaps a little more complicated than the ECU on the Jag.
Yet computer components are cheap to buy and a doddle to swap out.
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A modern 'basic' car could be quite good; light with good handling a rust-free bodyshell a simple injection system. A modern 'Alfasud' is what we need. Wind-up windows no CL no PAS and no climate control!
How longs the waiting list and will there be a lightweight version?
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Well you could always use a key... :-)
If you want basic, fril free motoring then try an end-of-line old model Micra, or maybe a Ford Ka, they have very little to go wrong...
Blue
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Anyway, if you feel forced into buing a modern car with all of these toys to go wrong, and the PAS/central locking/heated seats or whatever else stops working, then just don't fix it! The car will still work, just without the modern toy.
No it won't. Car without working PAS is difficult to drive.
Similarly, if climate control ECU packs up you really need to get it fixed. I replaced one on a '96 Merc. last year. £1200 for the ECU! The owner soon saw the advantages of bowden cable and a couple of levers (plus the ECU in your head and temp sensors in hands and feet). Anyway, I replaced the ECU and within a month the aircon evap was leaking - another £1000 job.
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I would have a bet that we won't see many of the current crop of HDi and TDCi diesels going past 6 years or mega mileages.
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But if people are saying that they don't want PAS, Air con etc. then if the air con packs up and that is their point of view, why would they want to fix it?
Personally as nice as an old fashioned DIY car sounds, no one will buy it because it doesn't have the required PAS, Air Con, etc. which are now minimum specs when buying new cars for most people.
My aunt was buying a used car for about £1000 recently, even she required PAS, Electics etc. for that money!
Blue
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My aunt was buying a used car for about £1000 recently, even she required PAS, Electics etc. for that money! Blue
I'm after something similar for my wife, what did your aunt get?
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She got an N plate Ford Escort 1.6 LX.
She needs it for her mobile business as she visits client's houses and uses it to transport all her work stuff. When we first went looking she was dead against an Escort, but then I showed her a nice dark metallic greeney/blue one and she decided to give it a go.
Anyway, it's turned out to be perfect for her, large enough to carry all the stuff when the seats are folded (portable massage tables are still quite large!) It looks smart, she specifically couldn't have a car that looked scruffy as it must look professional when she arrives at a house(yellow 3 wheelers were out of the question!:) It's got all the toys that she wanted, plus it's fairly safe, has proven to be totally reliable, it's not underpowered, handles well, and is quite economical to run. It seems to be getting well over 30mpg.
So from been dead against Escorts, she now loves her little car to bits and she's always washing and polishing it. :-)
What sort of car does your wife fancy?
Blue
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Come on, Aprilia - some cars never needed PAS, and work perfectly well without it because they are small and light enough: e.g. 205 or Punto (petrol). I recall being in a Pug dealer's about 1992 and seeing a new CTi 1.9 with PAS - the salesman said the steering was so light it was scary.
Until air-con became 'standard' I was quite happy to do without. Now, of course, cars without become less salable so one is gradually coerced into accepting it, like every other new gizmo.
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No it won't. Car without working PAS is difficult to drive. Similarly if climate control ECU packs up you really need to get it fixed. I replaced one on a '96 Merc. last year. £1200 for the ECU!
And you actually recommended he bought a new ECU? For £1200? On a 10 year old car?
There are numerous 1996 Mercedes in breakers yards all over the country following huge failiures or accident damage. I doubt a Climate Control ECU from one of these would have cost £1200.
You seem to have a pretty big downer on everything Aprilia. According to you, everything ever made in Europe, ever, will break, all the time, and you've 'never seen X Y or Z work past 6 years'. Strange really that others experience dosn't match that.
Of the three Mk2 Mondeos I know of with air conditioning, it still works beautifully on all of them. My old one is now 7 years old and hasn't even had a regass in its entire life. Still blows icy cold air.
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Cliff, Great car the Triumph 2000. I bought one from a friend in 1977 which was a Mk1 1967 in Royal blue and it was a superb looking motor with 57K on the clock. Leather seats and overdrive with that lovely sounding straight six engine. I paid £450.00 for it.
The friend who sold it me had been a fanatical owner who used to change the oil every 1500 miles and said he put the waste oil back in box sections, doors etc. Not a trace of rust when I sold it ten years later for £270.00 with 140K and still running perfectly.
So easy to work on and could stand inside the bonnet to lift off the cylinder head when I decarbonised it and fitted new valve springs.
The only problems I ever had was the overdrive solenoid which used to give up after a couple of years but was only a ten minute job to replace it with one from the scrapyard. Apparently they cured that with the Mk11.
It once had a droning noise which sounded as if the differential was wearing out and decided to replace it with one from a scrapper. This was in the days when they used to pile cars on top of each other in the scrapyard, and it was a unerving job removing it as the 2000 was the bottom car with two above. However managed it without getting crushed and fitted it to mine which is a relatively simple job only needing the flanges from the diff unbolting.
What I had failed to notice was that the donor car was a 2.5 and this was evident when testing.
A different ratio and was unusable as the 2000 simply wouldn?t pull the higher gear.
Refitted the old diff and found it was a wheel bearing to be the problem (if I remember correctly.)
Lovely car for the DIY man to work on with nothing beyond the normal tools. The only problem which I never really solved was the poor heater which would give great volumes of hot air in the summer when not required and poor in the type of weather we are having today. Replaced heater matrix, fitted winter thermostat, radiator muff but it was never satisfactory.
Rivalry at the time between Rover 2000 and Triumph 2000 owners but to myself it was a one horse race. But then I would say that????.
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Tweaking the thread a bit, what are the used cars which are new enough to not have rust problems (let's not go back to having to weld it up for the MoT!) but old enough to have fewer ECUs. Just to make things more tricky we need power steering and aircon please.
I'll start with a '92-95 VW Passat, aircon as an option if you keep an eye on the auto trader.
Next please?
Gareth
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TBH I think you will find most European air-con systems will have packed up by 6 years anyway (and be uneconomic to repair). The Jap ones tend to last a bit longer. You won't find many early 90's aircon systems that still work properly.
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I had a Triumph 2500PI: not a slow and boring 2000!:-)
:Memories: Awful handling: the driveshafts were splined and NOT bearing so they locked on fast cornering. RUST. The design of the steering was poor: the rack and pinion bushes under the engine rotted regularly with oil. The engine wore its thrust bearing and affected the clutch.
I had a 1980 BMW: no rust but handling (320i) was poor in wet. I had a Mercedes 260E : nice like a tank is... I had a Volvo 740.. reliable. That's it. A Ford Granada: rust and handling... A Rover 800- absolute carp.
Frankly I read all this stuff about the past : it was the same in the 1920 when the Veteran Car Club started bemoaning "they did not build like they used to"
Lets face it : ANY car misused/not maintained etc will go wrong.. I have never had an ECU fail but then I maintain all my cars... But I do agree that once they fail they can be very expensive to get right BUT:
I also remember poor fuel consumption and high wear rates for the cars of the 1980s...
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be:-)
madf
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it was the same in the 1920 when the Veteran Car Club started bemoaning "they did not build like they used to"
True, apparently these 'new' motorcars have brakes on all four wheels! Luxury or extravagance?
Gareth
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I have never had an ECU fail but thenI maintain all my cars...
However well you maintain your car won't affect the reliability of an ECU as they require no maintenance. If it's going to go, it will, regardless of how much you cherish the car.
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Whilst on the subject of ECU failure, - does anybody know of a reputable company that can repair these units economically, as in the case of some older vehicles, (which can be totally sound bodily and mechanically), the cost of a new unit is more expensive than the value of the car, which could otherwise have many years of serviceable running!!!!!
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OK Gareth how about my wifes car. Bought it 11 years ago from new. It was featured quite heavily in a recent thread ?The worst cars of the last 10 years? I didn?t let her see these comments or it would have been a pistols at dawn job if she had found the authors..
Its in metallic British racing green with power steering and a slide/lift sunroof. (sorry I can?t give you air conditioning). Very comfortable seats and easy to drive. Honda gearbox and mechanically very easy to maintain. No rust or corrosion and the MOT man always goes into ecstasy over its condition calling over his mate to have a look.
Diesel engine with no electronics and regularly returns well over 50mpg. It has 75K on the clock mainly short running but has done many trips to Southern Portugal returning over 60mpg and never giving any problems whatsoever. Last year for the first time I persuaded her that we take my car using the argument that if it broke down the recovery people would have refused to repatriate it on the grounds it would be cheaper to pay you the value. But I should have known better and had to agree its not so relaxing.
In 11 years the only replacement has been the alternator which cost about £90.00 fitted, and one bottom steering ball joint which I did myself for £14.00
Original battery, glowplugs and the engine has never been touched apart from a cambelt.
No its not a German or Japanese product but a humble unloved derided Maestro with a Perkins turbo diesel engine.
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I look back nostalgically to my first car - a 1949 Sunbeam Talbot. No power steering, no heater or A/C (but a vent down by your feet to get a draught up the trouser leg!), no radio, no windscreen washers, bloomin' great 20 inch cross-ply tyres which gave no grip, 20mpg on a good day, water pump that went every 5 minutes. Sheer misery to drive on a day like today. Give me a modern car anyday.
Wonder how many of the "old car advocates" are sitting in front of a computer with flat screen, cordless mouse & keyboard, million gig hard drive, 512meg RAm, CD rom, DVD player etc connected via broadband? ZX 81 anybody? Much less to go wrong!
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I'd like to nominate a modern to rely on for the next 40 years. I've just sold my old work hack (Skoda Octavia 1.9TDi) with 253k on the clock. I've owned this car since new (9 years) and its never given me any trouble. Its even been very economical on parts, with tyres lasting 35k at the front and 70k at the rear, a new clutch only required at 180k and front discs at 100k and 200k. It never broke down once, but recently my circumstances have changed and I no longer commute the thousands of miles that I once did, so it's been replaced..
With a 72k Triumph 2000! Seriously.
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At what stage in the evolition of the motor car did it become usual to hide the engine with a silly plastic cover? Do these serve any useful purpose?
Some are designed to help the engine reach operating temperature quicker and keep the engine warm for longer between starts hence saving fuel/emissions.
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I'm no 'old car' fan, but I'm no great fan of some modern developments either - like climate control, which I find unecessary and unwanted by me.
There is a 'happy medium' somewhere.
Whose idea was it turn the reliable Diesel motor (one of whose attractions was a lack of electronic bits to go wrong) into something as horribly complex as a TDCi?
There is also a serious environmental issue here too. Typically half of the pollution produced by a car is produced during its manufacture. We should be making more durable cars that last 10 years or so, not scrapping them at 6 years because an ECU has failed and it costs more than the value of the car to replace it.
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I think we can thank the european union for killing the diy friendly car by forcing complicated technology onto engines. The tailpipe emission limits are now about 1.5% of those imposed on a car from the early 70's....in 2005 this limit is set to halve again....then if that wasn't tough enough the enviromental legislators require a further reduction in overall fuel economy of 10% by 2008....also cars have to meet tougher crash tests which adds alot of weight ...and now we are too lazy to wind windows up anymore so the electric motors add more weight..it just goes on..
So only relatively few people understand or know how to fix the electronics on a modern car....the average main dealer is out of their depth changing the plugs these days.It's not really surprising that some major car makers are losing money now.
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I have a proper car. But by choice I use my 20 yr old Lightweight Landrover. Much more fun. No depreciation. Ideal for days like today.
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I agree with Aprilia regarding the Alfasud as an ideal simple car provided it's given a good bodyshell and drum brakes rather than discs at the rear. I remember that the rear discs on these cars used to rust if the Alfasud was used much of the time for city driving.
But the Mark 1 or Mark 2 VW Golfs would also be good bets as reliable, simple cars. I believe these models are still being made at VW's South African plant for local sale. What a pity VW doesn't export them to Europe.
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Aprilla, there are plenty of cars out there without climate. Buy one of them!
In general, give me a modern diesel any day! I never knew anything about diy on old cars so the new ones are no different except that they helpfully seal up any areas they don't want diy-ers tampering with and colour code the rest - yellow dipstick, water in here, etc. All a godsend to me...
I drive a TDCi and its a wonderfully complex machine and, from my narrow viewpoint, just like all my old diesels. I expect it to last a good 10 years and, I will consider myself unlucky if it breaks down as often as previous cars (Cavalier 1.7TD, Orion 1.8D).
Give me a new car anyday!
Splodgeface
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f you want reliability, efficiency etc then a modern car is obviously better especially if you are not mechanically minded. Up to say 6 or 7 years old most people would take the modern cars every time.
The main gripe I would have is that an enthusiast can keep cars which are currently 20 years old and more on the road fairly easily. When most of today's cars get to 10 or 15 years old that's going to be far harder because of the levels of technology involved making it either too expensive or too technically complex to repair or maintain.
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" you want reliability, efficiency etc then a modern car is obviously better especially if you are not mechanically minded."
And you have load of money to pay for the depreciation and the main dealer servicing! 5 grand a year(?) is a lot for reliability when you could get a self-employed mechanic to service and look it over twice a year; or alteranively run a car with a years ticket into the ground and not pay for any servicing or spares.
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And why on earth are we using this Internet thingy for this discussion? Let's go back to typewriters; they never broke down, and even if they did, you could repair them with a fag paper and a bit of chewing gum. HonestJohn could run off some copies of everyone else's letters using a mimeograph machine and send them back to us.
Sorry, this is the worst type of Luddite thinking. Is anyone really trying to say that motoring used to be cheaper? More reliable? It's probably cheaper today pound for pound, let alone if everything were priced relative to earnings.
My first car was a three-year-old mini (at the time). It constantly broke down despite regular servicing. It rusted, it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. It had no suspension to talk of and was a death trap if an accident had occurred. No stereo fitted. Every MOT was a deep dip into my pocket. It cost me £1500 (iirc) 16 years ago. I remember one MOT costing over £500.
My current car is a 4yo Omega. Like most modern cars, it starts EVERY time, MOTs sail by with the payment of the test fee alone, it's air-conditioned and power steered with a cd player. It would cost you about £4,000. Relative to salary, it's a no-brainer.
No, give me modernity any time.
V
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Modern car manufacturers still cynically get customers to pay for their design faults. In a previous life I worked for a Coventry based tractor firm who introuduced an unreliable electronic instrument panel. When I pointed this out to a colleague in Marketing he replied "Yes, nice little earner that".
The equivalent on the Omega are the plastic pulleys that have to be renewed as part of a cambelt change, bumping the price up to £300.
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Cracking thread this.
Cars with character somehow got engineered away. Shared floorpans and Computer Aided Design has given shareholder value and synergy, but taken away soul.
Plastic sheets cover engines. Engines were always one of the best things to look at in the car. Plastics surround and encompass you with airbags.
And the modern cars with soul? There are some, but they're tellingly called 'old fashioned'. The MX5 is always said to be based on the Lotus Elan We understand a car which isn't honed for the motorway as belonging to and existing out of existing out of nostalgia.
The Elise is another car with character that harks backwards. There are others too.
For modern cars the figures all look better. But do they feel better?
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My first car was a three-year-old mini (at the time). It constantly broke down despite regular servicing. It rusted it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. It had no suspension to talk of and was a death trap if an accident had occurred. No stereo fitted.
Mine too. Luckily it had a heater which was an optional extra. Despite being one of the cheapest cars you could buy the price of a new 850 was close to a year's wages.
No speed limits on most roads but as its top speed was 70 mph flat-out and took half a day to reach it, that wasn't much benefit.
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