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Arguing on the flip side of this is the fact that the new Prius is faster from 0-60 than the muscle car Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit, has an equ

Arguing on the flip side of this is the fact that the new Prius is faster from 0-60 than the muscle car Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit, has an equivalent top end, and: - gets something like 3x the mileage - has air conditioning - has a ridiculously better sound system - has anti-lock brakes - has traction control - has far superior crumple zones/crash protection - has air bags - is far more reliable (even when the Trans Am was new) - has 2x(?) the expected lifespan - has adaptive cruise control - probably a lot of other things I'm not thinking of

bdcravens 3y ago
Most cars are faster than that Trans Am, even cars that aren't super efficient. It's common to think of "fast" cars from an era with a sense of nostalgia, but objectively, they're pedestrian by comparison with your random modern sedan. I think the point of the article isn't to compare with cars from 50 years ago, as many of the points you made here have been the case for years. Cars got so good, that manufacturers had to start pushing to get more revenue and continue to sell cars, even though modern cars can last 15-20 years pretty reliably.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  Yep, I just picked the Prius because I posted stats about it <somewhere, maybe HN?> a few months back and got railed because "the Trans Am is cooler, man!" so I had the stats handy. So your point is that the author's proposed enshitification has been recent and brief? I'll happily concede that cars getting larger and heavier is a blight, but that's been going on (in the U.S.) for at least twenty years, while many of the other points the author makes (and which I am dubious of) are just in the past 5 years or so. As one example, I'll happily take the pain of pairing over bluetooth over having to plug in to USB any day, and let's not even start comparing that to e.g. the cassette-simulator connectors of thirty years ago. :-)
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    It has been a process, and I don't know that it's an obvious line. Bluetooth is great, but cars dating back to 2012 had it. Funny enough, most cars with CarPlay aren't yet wireless, requiring USB connections. If there's anything I'd point to as an obvious tipping point, I'd say it's switches and knobs that have been converted to touch controls. (for example, on my EV6, I have to use a touch control to toggle between radio controls and climate controls on the strip where you'd normally see them)
- eszed 3y ago
  I think there was a sweet spot - roughly late 90s (maybe ODB2 adoption, whenever that was for a given brand), through the mid-oughts - where you got most of the benefits of computerization without most of the drawbacks. I have a car from that era that I never want to give up.
Hamuko 3y ago
>has a ridiculously better sound system That's definitely not one that is progressively getting better with time. I feel like my early 2000s car has a better quality sound than a 2010s BMW I test drove, and I'm pretty sure mine didn't have any kind of an upgrade package on it.
- fho 3y ago
  I guess the thing with sound systems is that Hifi has basically not evolved in the last 30? Maybe even 50 years. I think the last tipping point was the introduction of Class-D amplifiers which provided "unlimited" power compared to before. Cheap DSP and a better understanding of psychoacoustics maybe. My point here is that nothing really changed the game. You could get a high-end, expensive Hifi system 30 years ago that matches the sound quality of a high-end system of today. The rest, Internet access, BT connectivity, Spotify is bells and whistles.

bdcravens 3y ago

Most cars are faster than that Trans Am, even cars that aren't super efficient. It's common to think of "fast" cars from an era with a sense of nostalgia, but objectively, they're pedestrian by comparison with your random modern sedan. I think the point of the article isn't to compare with cars from 50 years ago, as many of the points you made here have been the case for years. Cars got so good, that manufacturers had to start pushing to get more revenue and continue to sell cars, even though modern cars can last 15-20 years pretty reliably.

gcanyon 3y ago
Yep, I just picked the Prius because I posted stats about it <somewhere, maybe HN?> a few months back and got railed because "the Trans Am is cooler, man!" so I had the stats handy. So your point is that the author's proposed enshitification has been recent and brief? I'll happily concede that cars getting larger and heavier is a blight, but that's been going on (in the U.S.) for at least twenty years, while many of the other points the author makes (and which I am dubious of) are just in the past 5 years or so. As one example, I'll happily take the pain of pairing over bluetooth over having to plug in to USB any day, and let's not even start comparing that to e.g. the cassette-simulator connectors of thirty years ago. :-)
- bdcravens 3y ago
  It has been a process, and I don't know that it's an obvious line. Bluetooth is great, but cars dating back to 2012 had it. Funny enough, most cars with CarPlay aren't yet wireless, requiring USB connections. If there's anything I'd point to as an obvious tipping point, I'd say it's switches and knobs that have been converted to touch controls. (for example, on my EV6, I have to use a touch control to toggle between radio controls and climate controls on the strip where you'd normally see them)
eszed 3y ago
I think there was a sweet spot - roughly late 90s (maybe ODB2 adoption, whenever that was for a given brand), through the mid-oughts - where you got most of the benefits of computerization without most of the drawbacks. I have a car from that era that I never want to give up.

Hamuko 3y ago

>has a ridiculously better sound system That's definitely not one that is progressively getting better with time. I feel like my early 2000s car has a better quality sound than a 2010s BMW I test drove, and I'm pretty sure mine didn't have any kind of an upgrade package on it.

fho 3y ago
I guess the thing with sound systems is that Hifi has basically not evolved in the last 30? Maybe even 50 years. I think the last tipping point was the introduction of Class-D amplifiers which provided "unlimited" power compared to before. Cheap DSP and a better understanding of psychoacoustics maybe. My point here is that nothing really changed the game. You could get a high-end, expensive Hifi system 30 years ago that matches the sound quality of a high-end system of today. The rest, Internet access, BT connectivity, Spotify is bells and whistles.