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Trying to estimate whether I'm old enough that when I buy the last car of my life, there will still be ones without screens to choose from.
by gdulli 11mo ago
Trying to estimate whether I'm old enough that when I buy the last car of my life, there will still be ones without screens to choose from.
- floxy 11mo agoblack construction paper?
- SoftTalker 11mo agoAll new cars have screens since reverse cameras are mandatory. You’ll have to shop on the used car market.
- gdulli 11mo agoOh really? My current car is over 20 years old so I'm way out of the loop. I guess I'll hope for options with smaller screens that control fewer of the functions.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoKeep that car as long as you can. Modern cars are shit. Peak of cars was probably 1990s/2000s.
- chneu 11mo agoYou could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you generally had to go looking. The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart" features, like traction control, can be turned off.
- sudonanohome 11mo agoYou forgot to mention that ST is a manual transmission car, not for everyone
- qball 11mo agoThe attitude that the computers should always be subordinate to the driver also extends to the transmission.
- sudonanohome 11mo ago100% manuals are the way to go if you want to feel like a driver, not a passenger. I love my manual Jetta Thing is, people are lazy. US market is automatics only. Can't make people understand what the clutch is or why slushbox is bad for fuel efficiency. No one cares. Gas guzzlers are the national idea My kid learned to drive a manual in 15 minutes. Too much effort for US drivers!
- ErroneousBosh 11mo agoI honestly can't say I notice any difference between driving a manual or an automatic car. If we were in a car right now and I was driving, I'd have to look at the gearstick to tell you if it was auto or manual. I genuinely don't get the USian obsession with driving manual gearbox cars being somehow "elite".
- sudonanohome 11mo agoWhen you have a small fuel efficient engine, you can tell and feel the difference. With a V6 under your hood, you probably don't care. US is mostly big engines
- qball 11mo agoYou will still care that you're wasting a bunch of your engine's potential, even with a V8. Autos (not DCTs) don't generally let you rev the engine as high as manuals do, they don't really let you take advantage of engine braking, and they may ignore your command to manually shift them into a lower gear at will (DCTs can do that too).
- 11mo ago
- userbinator 11mo ago1960s/early 1970s for me.
- ErroneousBosh 11mo agoMy daily is a 1997 Range Rover. My next daily will likely be something with approximately the same level of technology. There are about ten buttons on the dashboard, of which the only ones I care about is the rotary knob that turns on the headlights and the button that switches the heater from "normal" to "EVERYTHING UP FULL ALL ON RIGHT NOW FULL BORE MAXIMUM EVERYTHING WE ARE GOING TO AIR FRY A POLAR BEAR ON THE BACK SEAT". There's an LCD screen. It's the size of my thumb, and tells me how many miles it's done (only 190,000 - it's my low mileage one, my other has done 270 and there's a guy on my forum who's rapidly closing in on 600,000 miles in his), what gear it thinks it's probably in, and occasionally it uses this LCD to lie about the gearbox overheating because water got into the plug for the sensor when I drove through a river and it came over the bonnet. It's not very fast or very efficient, but it does everything I need a car to do, and I have a full factory service manual for it and easy access to spares.
- genter 11mo agoThe screen doesn't have to be obnoxious like this, though. A Chevy van has a small screen embedded in the rear view mirror, which is impossible to see when not in reverse.
- kjkjadksj 11mo agoPeople drive 70 year old cars today. Just buy a sensible car from sometime before the 2020s, keep up with it and put on 400k miles on it.
- queenkjuul 11mo agoMy 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware carriage someday
- whartung 11mo agoTo be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs. I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it. I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything. It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car. But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental. That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think. It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car. The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
- sudonanohome 11mo agoSo your 12 yrs old truck with only 120k miles got: - radiator replaced - water pump replaced - AC repaired (twice) - suspension rebuilt And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe
- genter 11mo agoYeah, it's not as if Mercedes (who made the vehicle he's talking about) or BMW are German.
- sudonanohome 11mo agoMercedes or BMW don't sell "tough trucks" lol. They sell luxury goods, which people know to avoid when they care about reliability The thing is, jeeps are even beating the BMWs when it comes to unreliability. Yes Mercedes built that garbage for the US market because US market eats that crap. Then stellantis took it a step up and removed reliability from their vocabulary entirely - more profitable that way. I'd pick a modern VW over American garbage all day any day. But sure, keep yourself convinced about exceptionalism of American SUVs.
- venturecruelty 11mo agoWhat if, instead of just attempting to retreat into a shrinking world that will eventually disappear, we all collectively worked together to fix things?
- CGMthrowaway 11mo agoMay I present Coretti Cruisers restomods. Prime example: https://x.com/washghost1/status/1994198208545714472 https://x.com/washghost1/status/1994198208545714472 Cost roughly $150K
- winrid 11mo agoCurrent gen base model Chevy vehicles don't have smart screens, just some basic UI for the reverse camera/radio etc.