>Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years (part time car dealer in the UK here) While I don't think tha

>Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years (part time car dealer in the UK here) While I don't think that's completely true, I think it's pretty much right. Most cars just offer incremental improvements over the previous model, and styling changes. They're clearly better in most ways, but tend to be larger and heavier because of this. I have a 12 year old van (Renault trafic) as my daily transport (6 seater as my gf has 4 kids). Its got 230000 miles on it, drives perfectly and still does 40mpg. For work I sometimes hire a new equivalent (I play bass in the band of a 1970s rock star, and drive us to some UK gigs), and while it's a bit smoother and nicer to drive and had features like cruise control, to buy one would be about £25000... And the kicker? Worse on fuel than my own van! (I've hired several, across other manufacturers, none beat 35mpg,and that was on motorway runs). Cars have got to the same point Microsoft Word did in 97.