The future of vehicles....

[fdcg27]

Well, Brit electrics have never been noted for their excellence.
Also, this thing is beyond any reasonable life expectancy at its age and miles.

 

[Cujet]

Well, Brit electrics have never been noted for their excellence.
Also, this thing is beyond any reasonable life expectancy at its age and miles.

I dunno, my airplane is 54 years old. The car is just a mechanical device that still drives just fine, and is more comfortable, more responsive and less annoying than many new cars. Well maintained vehicles should last a very long time.

 

[SC Maintenance]

That is only true if you are not a Jaguar owner

My 2003 X-Type has the largest set of weird electronic failures I've ever seen. I don't think there is one electronic component on the car that is unaffected. 235K miles of mechanical supremacy, coupled with the doors locking when blinkers or brake pedal is used and the interior lights refusing to power down, despite all doors closed. And the ECU goes into hard limp mode when cruise is engaged sometimes. Not to mention the dash going "all alarm red" for no apparent reason. Fixed by a shutdown restart on the fly. Absolutely bizarre, oh the latest is the electronic heating and AC going absolutely Egyptian, with hieroglyphics on display, and full heat for 30 seconds every half hour. And plenty more!!!

Any idea who made the electronic modules in that car? There are really only a handful - Denso, Hitachi, Bosch, Continental....

 

[Cujet]

Any idea who made the electronic modules in that car? There are really only a handful - Denso, Hitachi, Bosch, Continental....

No, sorry I did not notice who made it. I took the dash apart to see if it had cracked solder joints. Tried cleaning it up and reflowing/touching up some solder joints. I saw nothing wrong under the microscope and nothing I did helped or changed anything.

 

[Arc]

Saw this anonymous hit piece.
Problem I have with it is that everything points to vehicles lasting longer with fewer problems than was the case in past decades.
It is common for vehicles with typically indifferent maintenance to go fifteen years and 200K before they are deemed unworthy of repair, something unheard of in past decades, when 100K without major repair was considered quite good.
Also, don't try to tell me about electronics. They are less failure prone than are mechanical systems and they either die an early under warranty death in a handful of cases or accompany the vehicle in which they're installed on its last ride to the scrap yard working just fine.
Finally, if cars really were engineered to die an early death, do you really think there'd be so many lenders willing to buy seven year paper?

When a friend, neighbor or family member needs a ride to pick up their new vehicle thats always in the shop I usually show up in my old 2005 hemi RAM that never breaks down. If something does break on it I can fix it for next to nothing and do it myself. These new cars are nothing but electronic modules and a ton of copper wiring.

 

[chorty]

Saw this anonymous hit piece.
Problem I have with it is that everything points to vehicles lasting longer with fewer problems than was the case in past decades.
It is common for vehicles with typically indifferent maintenance to go fifteen years and 200K before they are deemed unworthy of repair, something unheard of in past decades, when 100K without major repair was considered quite good.
Also, don't try to tell me about electronics. They are less failure prone than are mechanical systems and they either die an early under warranty death in a handful of cases or accompany the vehicle in which they're installed on its last ride to the scrap yard working just fine.
Finally, if cars really were engineered to die an early death, do you really think there'd be so many lenders willing to buy seven year paper?

I'm keeping all my carbed and mechanical injected engines.

Just swapped a used 12v Cummins with 400k into a 2019 3500 dually denali with a locked up gasser.


The 2020 Colorado with a 383 stroker using a 1 wire fire HEI and a quadra-poop double pumper is a head Turner too...

 

[chorty]

That is only true if you are not a Jaguar owner

My 2003 X-Type has the largest set of weird electronic failures I've ever seen. I don't think there is one electronic component on the car that is unaffected. 235K miles of mechanical supremacy, coupled with the doors locking when blinkers or brake pedal is used and the interior lights refusing to power down, despite all doors closed. And the ECU goes into hard limp mode when cruise is engaged sometimes. Not to mention the dash going "all alarm red" for no apparent reason. Fixed by a shutdown restart on the fly. Absolutely bizarre, oh the latest is the electronic heating and AC going absolutely Egyptian, with hieroglyphics on display, and full heat for 30 seconds every half hour. And plenty more!!!

You're not supposed to drive metric cars on imperial roads.

Incompatible.

 

[dfarr67]

The cost increase for a much longer service life may not be very much. Did you watch the planned obsolescence video above? They're trying to save a few pennies here and there.

Would you accept your surgeon using a hip prosthesis that was predicted to have a shorter service life because the hospital could save a few bucks? I'll have the good one, thank you very much.

I agree with this, you just don't know the cost.......might be $xxx a vehicle to upgrade materials, but to gm that's $xxx X a million units.

 

[ecotourist]

I agree with this, you just don't know the cost.......might be $xxx a vehicle to upgrade materials, but to gm that's $xxx X a million units.

And even more units than are sold now when people figure out that GM is making great cars again. They used to. (Some) GM products were very stylish, had good performance and were about as reliable as the best products made anywhere.

 

[fdcg27]

And even more units than are sold now when people figure out that GM is making great cars again. They used to. (Some) GM products were very stylish, had good performance and were about as reliable as the best products made anywhere.

How far back are you going?
GM churned out millions of cars over the past fifty years that were a hot mess.
I can name some GM models going back to 1970 that were sold in the millions that were junk from delivery.
GM could be making the modern iteration of the W123 with better rust resistance and it would still take them decades to recover their reputation with many buyers.

 

[Number_35]

How far back are you going?
GM churned out millions of cars over the past fifty years that were a hot mess.
I can name some GM models going back to 1970 that were sold in the millions that were junk from delivery.
GM could be making the modern iteration of the W123 with better rust resistance and it would still take them decades to recover their reputation with many buyers.

I've heard people say that GM's high-water mark was 1965 - hard to believe that's now 60 years ago.

 

[4WD]

EVs are being likened to smartphones. As for this video, I'm not blindly believing a faceless unidentified individual.

There is not a single one of these clowns I trust …
Those that do are just jumping on a narrative that makes them feel knowledgeable … (feel) …

 

[ecotourist]

How far back are you going?
GM churned out millions of cars over the past fifty years that were a hot mess.
I can name some GM models going back to 1970 that were sold in the millions that were junk from delivery.
GM could be making the modern iteration of the W123 with better rust resistance and it would still take them decades to recover their reputation with many buyers.

Let's try 1963 - 1968: Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Camaro, Chevelle, Firebird, etc. I'd take any one of them.

Almost all of them classics. Beautiful lines, good or better performance, durable. Not such great rust resistance but okay for the times.

A '65, '66, '67 Chevrolet SS or Chevelle SS clone (or a Pontiac/Buick/Oldsmoble for that matter) with a modern V8 and a modern automatic transmission/ 4 speed manual would be a masterpiece.

 

[PandaBear]

https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/c...-planned-obsolescence-and-disposable-44514856

Wonder how they have saved by skating to close to the edge then spending millions on recalls.

This is why some of us would not buy a car run by a bean counter management but rather a family run business who wants to keep legacy going.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Peak car was designed somewhere between 1996 (start of OBD2) and 2008 (when CAFE went really crazy). You got all the good - closed loop control, things like VVT, and the electronics were reasonably simple and not integrated into the non needed infotainment touch screen that cost too much to repair, or couldn't be repaired with a soldering iron and some expertise.

Note I said designed, so slapping OBD2 on a 1993 didn't necessarily do much, and stuff designed prior to 2008 might have run in the same form for years - for example Nissan Frontier was essentially unchanged from 2005 to 2019 and are well known to be ultra reliable.

There were good and lousy cars built during every period, but this revisionist history of a open loop carbureted and distributor controlled car being awesome is just nonsense. They didn't produce enough power to get out of their own way and burned a ton of gas not doing it.

 

[fdcg27]

Let's try 1963 - 1968: Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Camaro, Chevelle, Firebird, etc. I'd take any one of them.

Almost all of them classics. Beautiful lines, good or better performance, durable. Not such great rust resistance but okay for the times.

A '65, '66, '67 Chevrolet SS or Chevelle SS clone (or a Pontiac/Buick/Oldsmoble for that matter) with a modern V8 and a modern automatic transmission/ 4 speed manual would be a masterpiece.

These were some attractive cars and you can actually take the era of GM building nice looking cars into the seventies.
This was also the Bill Mitchell era and I would imagine he'd be embarrassed by the look of most of GM's current offerings.

 

[4WD]

Guess I’m the wrong age to have owned all these great GM vehicles - somehow I made it to this day with post greatness “junk” instead of appliances as edyvw likes to call allot of them …

 

[Marcozi]

It's all about the money. Period.

 

[dfarr67]

How far back are you going?
GM churned out millions of cars over the past fifty years that were a hot mess.
I can name some GM models going back to 1970 that were sold in the millions that were junk from delivery.
GM could be making the modern iteration of the W123 with better rust resistance and it would still take them decades to recover their reputation with many buyers.

Funny how that works- decades to build something, a few years to tear it down.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Let's try 1963 - 1968: Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Camaro, Chevelle, Firebird, etc. I'd take any one of them.

Here's mine: 1965 442 and 1968 Corvette