Hacker News Reader

Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe for a minute that modern cars last less long than old cars. Have you actually used a 60's or 70's car as a daily driver? The big difference is also maintenance. If you've ever had an old car you know about oil change intervals that's maybe 25% of modern cars, constant valve adjustments, distributor problems, carburetor adjustments, etc.

Modern cars as a rule go hundreds of thousands of miles without major problems while using a fraction of the gasoline per mile and producing a fraction of the pollution.

Yeah, sometimes they get it wrong and design something that doesn't last. But do you think that didn't happen before, too? Remember that the models we know and remember 50 years later are the winners. There's a strong survivorship bias at work here.

View on HN

The tendency I see is that old stuff requires more repairs while new stuff is much more likely to become unrepairable. Pick your poison.

This is a false equivalence. On average, cars last about twice as long today than they did in the 70's. Just since the mid-90's, the average U.S. car age has gone from 8.4 to 11.4 years.

https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...

Doesn't that fit in line with what he said though? Newer cars last much longer than older cars did without repairs, but once the newer car breaks youre SOL

The average age of cars on the road is itself a good measure of when "you're SOL". Cars had a much shorter lifespan in past decades because they'd rust and break down much sooner, to the degree that it was more economical to buy a new car than to repair.

I wonder if it's hard for younger HN readers to appreciate the progress here? Having a car last 200,000 miles used to be a stroke of insane luck, like living to 90 years old - for most car models in the last 10 years, 200,000 is basically the least you could expect to get out of a car.

That's not really the point that's being argued though. Modern cars are undeniably better in terms of how long they last, but you can't go in and just repair all the pieces any more like you could with old cars. That is the point being discussed here

The two eras have dramatically different duty cycles.

They had a million mile tundra not long ago, I don't think you'll find a million mile engine from the 50s-70s

Here's one with more than 3 million miles: https://www.facebook.com/irvgordon3millionmiles/posts/188158...

Picking a world record is not a fair representation.

How many typical new cars would it take to get to that? How many typical old cars?

Modern car engines reach around 200k--depending on the make.

The transmissions are another beast. They just seem to die at 140k, plus, or minus how you drive.

Their wasen't constant valve adjustments, or carb adjustments , distributors were dead simple. 90% of the time it was a bad condenser, or the points contacts needed sanding, unless you happened to own a British Vehicle.

And yes Amercan vechicles made in the late 70's, and 80's were aweful.

Old was not necessarily better, but Shade Tree mechanics could work on them.

There's a reason wealthy men buy old classic cars. A few years ago the average guy could buy a vice classic. Today--it's changed. Their are guys stockpiling older collectable vechicle.

Every wonder why the new cars offer just 7 year, or 100,000 miles of the Powertrain warranty?

None of those 1970s cars broke because the factory used plastic parts in the engine. When you have experience with that and then find "Oh the plastic theromstat housing cracked" on your "modern" car, that appears to be a regression.

No they broke down far more frequently, for different things, and required a tonne more maintenance than modern cars.

Oh yes they did - and the plastics were not as advanced either so they were worse. For example: 1970 Lincoln Continental 460 v8 with plastic timing chain sprockets for "low noise".

I was aware of some screw ups of futuristic engineering from 1970s detroit but not this one!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com