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Do you think normal gas powered cars have have been getting less reliable? I agree with what many others here have said about how hard it is to service new veh

Do you think normal gas powered cars have have been getting less reliable? I agree with what many others here have said about how hard it is to service new vehicles. After he died, I kept my grandpa's 1970 Chevy C-10 pickup going for years. It was simple and very easy to fix/work on. But it needed a lot more attention than modern cars, and I think that while the age played a factor, it was just inherently less reliable. Key points: that Chevy needed an oil change every 3-4000 miles. New cars need oil changes every 8-10000 miles, give or take. Old cars also needed tune-ups. What do you think?

mushufasa 7y ago
older cars were more repairable. reliability is harder to make a blanket statement about. the most important difference IMO is that older cars are now dangerously unsafe by modern standards, by orders of magnitude. crumple zones, multiple airbags, pedestrian scoops, and now driver-assists like emergency braking.
- frenchyatwork 7y ago
  Cars are a bit of an anomalous category here. Driving is a pretty dangerous activity, so it's pretty sensible to give up some reliability & repair-ability in order for a safer road-coffin. This is much less true for something like a fridge/thermostat/tractor.
logfromblammo 7y ago
The individual parts have been getting more reliable, but they keep adding more points of failure. Like airbags. First, there was an airbag on the steering column. Then, there was one added to the passenger-side dashboard. Then they added side-curtain bags for head and hips. If you move the air bag reliability from 95% to 99%, but then add six more air bags, that's a 93.2% chance none will be bad. And if you cut the price of one airbag to 30%, but then add six more, that's still spending twice as much on airbags total. In some cars, an airbag deployment event totals the car. Cheaper to buy a new one than to replace all the air bags. Never mind the body damage. If you made a car with 1980 features out of 2020 parts, it would be lighter, cheaper, and more reliable. But it would also have 1980 gas mileage and safety features, and you'd be back to hand-cranked windows. Some of the newer features are worth the weight and complexity. Others are not. There could definitely be a market for a $5000 new car that requires little servicing, that can all be done at home without special tools, and 30 miles to the gallon--not from complex engine designs, or tricks like shutting down 2 cylinders in a 6 cylinder engine, but just from being lightweight with a good engine design. Anyone else remember when the car radio only had one speaker? When you could see around the A columns without moving your head? When the automatic part of the transmission was just pneumatically controlling the clutch for the paddle-shifted manual? We have the technology now to make a crapbox deathtrap that only needs to slow down to under 15 mph somewhere near a quicklube every 15000 miles, in order to last 500000 miles. The stripped-down car concept is explored by Polaris with the Slingshot, which is legally classified as a motorcycle, in order to build to a lower passenger safety standard. You're going to wear a helmet in your car, right? [wink]
jay_kyburz 7y ago
I think cars are different because there _is_ so much competition in the market.

mushufasa 7y ago

older cars were more repairable. reliability is harder to make a blanket statement about. the most important difference IMO is that older cars are now dangerously unsafe by modern standards, by orders of magnitude. crumple zones, multiple airbags, pedestrian scoops, and now driver-assists like emergency braking.

frenchyatwork 7y ago
Cars are a bit of an anomalous category here. Driving is a pretty dangerous activity, so it's pretty sensible to give up some reliability & repair-ability in order for a safer road-coffin. This is much less true for something like a fridge/thermostat/tractor.

logfromblammo 7y ago

The individual parts have been getting more reliable, but they keep adding more points of failure. Like airbags. First, there was an airbag on the steering column. Then, there was one added to the passenger-side dashboard. Then they added side-curtain bags for head and hips. If you move the air bag reliability from 95% to 99%, but then add six more air bags, that's a 93.2% chance none will be bad. And if you cut the price of one airbag to 30%, but then add six more, that's still spending twice as much on airbags total. In some cars, an airbag deployment event totals the car. Cheaper to buy a new one than to replace all the air bags. Never mind the body damage. If you made a car with 1980 features out of 2020 parts, it would be lighter, cheaper, and more reliable. But it would also have 1980 gas mileage and safety features, and you'd be back to hand-cranked windows. Some of the newer features are worth the weight and complexity. Others are not. There could definitely be a market for a $5000 new car that requires little servicing, that can all be done at home without special tools, and 30 miles to the gallon--not from complex engine designs, or tricks like shutting down 2 cylinders in a 6 cylinder engine, but just from being lightweight with a good engine design. Anyone else remember when the car radio only had one speaker? When you could see around the A columns without moving your head? When the automatic part of the transmission was just pneumatically controlling the clutch for the paddle-shifted manual? We have the technology now to make a crapbox deathtrap that only needs to slow down to under 15 mph somewhere near a quicklube every 15000 miles, in order to last 500000 miles. The stripped-down car concept is explored by Polaris with the Slingshot, which is legally classified as a motorcycle, in order to build to a lower passenger safety standard. You're going to wear a helmet in your car, right? [wink]

jay_kyburz 7y ago

I think cars are different because there _is_ so much competition in the market.