Hey Facepunch. Seeing the "Car design and how much it fucking sucks these days" thread inspired me to give you my thoughts on modern cars. Without further ado, let's begin.
[h2]Design[/h2]
Modern cars are designed terribly. Sure [i]some[/i] look nice, but it seems to have gone downhill since the mid eighties. But my real gripe isn't how they look, it's how the inside parts are designed. For example, my sister owns an early nineties Ford Tempo. Now, one day she noticed liquid spilling from the engine and onto the driveway. She contacted my dad, who is quite knowledgeable when it comes to cars. He determined that the power steering hose was leaking. Okay, shouldn't be too hard to fix, correct? Haha. So he put the car up on jacks and poked around in the engine. Turns out the power steering hose is in some place that is so difficult to get to you have to remove the steering rack and most of the front half of the engine. Now what the hell is up with that? A part that normally fails within a cars lifetime should not be that difficult to get to. On the other spectrum, my dad replaced the power steering hose on his 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme in 12 minutes.
Another thing about modern cars is how many wires and computers there are in them. Sure it may be safer, but at the same time computers aren't super reliable. For example, let's say there's a sensor in a modern car that monitors something extremely important. What if the sensor detects wrong? What if that really important component shuts off because of the sensor malfunction?
Also, the conversion to FWD in the eighties was a terrible idea. It makes everything needlessly complicated. What's wrong with RWD?
Last but not least, just how good old cars look. Let's compare.
[h2]Old Muscle/Sports Car vs Modern Muscle/Sports Car[/h2]
2006 Charger:
[IMG]http://www.shadetreemechanic.com/images/2006%20Charger%201%201500.jpg[/IMG]
1969 Charger:
[IMG]http://www.allpar.com/photos/dodge/1970/1969-charger.jpg[/IMG]
Sure the 2006 Charger doesn't look that bad, but it lacks the powerful look the '69 had.
New Challenger:
[IMG]http://www.cars.com/features/autoshows/2006/detroit/coverage/images/Concept_Dodge_Challenger_frontangle_mfr_430.jpg[/IMG]
Old Challenger:
[IMG]http://static.cargurus.com/images/site/2008/05/22/16/54/1970_dodge_challenger-pic-20157.jpeg[/IMG]
Now you're probably saying "Hey, the new Challenger looks almost as good/the same/better than the 1970 Challenger!" And I agree. But that's the point. They're designing modern muscle cars to look like older muscle cars. They do this because everyone agrees that 60s and some 70s muscle cars looked great. Same goes for the Ford GT.
[IMG]http://www.sportscarcup.com/cars/ford-gt-front.jpg[/IMG]
Although it looks better than the GT40, they still used most of the design aspects.
[h2]Quality[/h2]
From what I've seen, the quality of vehicles has gone down dramatically since the early eighties. In the past few weeks alone, I've kept a tally of how many old cars I see on the road. I've seen:
3 70s Oldsmobiles
4+ Old VW Bugs
A 69 Camaro
Countless other 60s sport cars
Out of all of them, I've only seen a bit of rust on one of them. It was a late seventies Olds Cutlass and it had a few specks of rust on it. But anyway, the late seventies Cutlasses were known to not be as good of quality. Anyway, on the other hand, I see so many of these 80s Honda's and Toyota's that are nearly rusted through. In fact, my dad had a friend who had bought and '83 Toyota. The metal on that thing was so thin that he nearly pushed a hole through it merely by lightly pushing his thumb into it. Comparably, the '78 Olds Delta Royale that my family currently owns has no rust on it and is in near perfect condition. As well, the metal body is extremely thick on that car. Funniest thing is that it hasn't had all that much maintenance done on it. Do you think a car from nowadays would last 34 years with nearly no maintenance?
The only other way I could explain to you how well older cars were built is by telling you that my great grandpa's '73 Olds Cutlass had over [i]1,000,000[/i] miles on it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'll probably update tomorrow with more complete thoughts. But for, now this is what I think. I'm guessing many will disagree, but hey. Just letting people know.
The reason why you see old cars with very little rust on them is because [B]people take care of them.[/B] When you see a mid 80's car that has rusted all the way through, it's because the owner's don't bother to take care of them.
While I agree that quality has degraded throughout the 80's and 90's compared to the 60's, you can't deny that quality is just getting better and better. Just look at Chrysler. Their early 2000's interiors were cheap shit and full of plastic, but now you take a look at them and you can find some real nice interiors. They use real metal and padded dashes, with a splash of high quality plastic for buttons and such.
The reason why the switch from RWD to FWD was made was because FWD gets better fuel economy, and better traction. Yes RWD is fun, but not all people need it.
The aesthetic aspects of cars are completely opinionated. Everyone has their styles that they like.
Computer reliability will get better as manufacturers get more fluent with them.
TheMourge is right, the reason older cars aren't rusty is because people take care of them. My Civic, even being of worse quality, being from the '80s (as you say), was built in Canada, driven in Alaska, and brought to the lower US at some point in its life. It's got over 250k miles on the clock (albeit not the drivetrain) and it hasn't got a speck of rust on it, not even on the underside.
My CRX is of the same generation, a year older than my Civic. It's got rust spots above the rear quarters, but those were always notorious about that.
I've had far more rusty 60s and 70s cars than I have 80s and 90s cars. The 60s and 70s cars you see on the road are generally nicer because they take care of them and drive them, not because they were of better quality.
[QUOTE=keyfuzz;30758697][h2]Quality[/h2]
From what I've seen, the quality of vehicles has gone down dramatically since the early eighties. In the past few weeks alone, I've kept a tally of how many old cars I see on the road. I've seen:
3 70s Oldsmobiles
4+ Old VW Bugs
A 69 Camaro
Countless other 60s sport cars
Out of all of them, I've only seen a bit of rust on one of them. It was a late seventies Olds Cutlass and it had a few specks of rust on it. But anyway, the late seventies Cutlasses were known to not be as good of quality. Anyway, on the other hand, I see so many of these 80s Honda's and Toyota's that are nearly rusted through. In fact, my dad had a friend who had bought and '83 Toyota. The metal on that thing was so thin that he nearly pushed a hole through it merely by lightly pushing his thumb into it. Comparably, the '78 Olds Delta Royale that my family currently owns has no rust on it and is in near perfect condition. As well, the metal body is extremely thick on that car. Funniest thing is that it hasn't had all that much maintenance done on it. Do you think a car from nowadays would last 34 years with nearly no maintenance?
The only other way I could explain to you how well older cars were built is by telling you that my great grandpa's '73 Olds Cutlass had over [i]1,000,000[/i] miles on it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'll probably update tomorrow with more complete thoughts. But for, now this is what I think. I'm guessing many will disagree, but hey. Just letting people know.[/QUOTE]
I don't understand what you consider to be a "modern car" because first you talk about the new Charger and then you go on and say how 80s rust buckets are also examples of modern cars
And plus there is absolutely no way a standard family car from this generation can be worse than the same thing from several decades ago. New cars are safer, more economical, faster and more practical. But it's hard to compare them on the same level because one will have much more features because it's 40 years newer.
Plus, I'm pretty sure the V6 in the New charger has more power than the old 60's engine. You didn't need to start a new thread, if you really wanted to voice your opinion you could have just bumped the old one instead of incurring something that is probably going to happen, and that is a flame war. And the steering wheel changing thing? That car also didn't have airbags, steering wheel radio controls, or even the eye sensors on luxury cars.
One thing that contributes to new car design is legislation, rules and health & safety. The rear lights have to be XX centimetres off the road, you're no longer allowed pop-up lights, the firewall needs to be designed in such a way that you wont end up with an engine on your lap if you hit a tree. I don't know a lot about the legislation and the rules but I can bet that car designed is influenced quite a lot by all the rules which need to be adhered to in order for it to be road legal. I don't think it's as bad over in the states yet but eventually when emissions rules are enforced you'll be seeing much smaller engines or a lot more diesels on your roads too.
oh boy, this thread again
[QUOTE=sam.clarke;30761531]One thing that contributes to new car design is legislation, rules and health & safety. The rear lights have to be XX centimetres off the road, you're no longer allowed pop-up lights, the firewall needs to be designed in such a way that you wont end up with an engine on your lap if you hit a tree. I don't know a lot about the legislation and the rules but I can bet that car designed is influenced quite a lot by all the rules which need to be adhered to in order for it to be road legal. I don't think it's as bad over in the states yet but eventually when emissions rules are enforced you'll be seeing much smaller engines or a lot more diesels on your roads too.[/QUOTE]
That's why BMW's done a complete 180 with their bumpers, going from the 70s park bench to the 2011 models that pretty much have [i]no[/i] bumper
not this again
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