There have been plenty of drastic improvements in cars in the past 20 years, but I'm not convinced that reliability is one of them. Compared to 1969, definitely

There have been plenty of drastic improvements in cars in the past 20 years, but I'm not convinced that reliability is one of them. Compared to 1969, definitely. Quality back then was awful. But there were plenty of very reliable cars around in the 90s, I'm still driving one of them. Those Buicks having major transmission problems within the first year of ownership would have been considered a disaster even in 1969. Same with Ford's powershift transmissions from a few years ago that tended to last ~25K miles.