Second Heater Core

There is generally a good reason that is should be "regular".

The typical american mentality with cars is to buy one, drive it to the ground, bitch and moan when it breaks, then replace it with another. Restart cycle.

Jan

I think people are much better overall but the manufacturers have removed so many of the old maintenance requirements that if one just changes the engine oil regularly they can get 100k+ miles from a vehicle. Throw in a little more maintenance and getting 150k-200k miles is fairly routine.

When consumer expectations are getting lower and lower, then poor quality gets widely accepted... then it somehow becomes 'average' quality, and then, eventually, the new standard. Over time, people reluctantly accept that it's not going to get any better than this, be it Ford, Chevy, or Volkswagen. Manufacturers would be foolish to make and sell products that are better, and last longer than expected. They NEED their products to fail or become unwanted as soon as possible (just short of getting a bad rep) so they can sell the next face lift model to the same guy.

If you tried to sell a car 30 years ago that would last only 6 years, you would have been lynched. Today a person who buys a new car, won't see it's 4th birthday, they trade it in and it becomes someone else's problem. Why even worry about preventative maintenance, you can't justify a further monetary investment in something you won't keep long enough to benefit from it. Just drive the shit out of it and pass it on to some unsuspecting poor fool who will then struggle with the inevitable breakdowns. You got what you wanted out of it.

Coincidentally, cars made 30, 40, and 50 years ago, are STILL on the road. Some in great numbers even, and in decent mechanical shape. Often with just as minimal maintenance. They were built to last a generation. Even cars that were the 'economical and cheap' alternative of their day, were designed tougher than most cars today. At some point some pencil pusher figured out they can cut material costs by making parts weaker, and subcontracting them to 3rd world countries. Sure they started failing more often, but that's how 'modern, complicated technology' is. . With time... sub-standard sneaked it's way into becoming the new Standard.

Keep your new junk, gimme something from the 60's.

I can't agree with you on this. The new cars we can buy today are light years ahead of the old ones of my youth. Back then you were lucky the car wasn't a complete buck of rust by 100,000 miles. In fact, having an engine last 100,000 miles was not the norm. Maintenance was much more intensive, mileage worse and performance/reliability not even close to the cars we have today. Most cars sold now can easily hit 100k miles and many are good for close to 200k miles if they are maintained well. Compare the current Mustang GT to just about any early Mustang and the difference is night and day regarding performance and reliability.

Most of the 80's cars are now gone. 70's cars are disappearing too. But there's still 60's cars around, and even when not maintained very well, are still kicking.

More maintenance? Old cars had 99% LESS parts that could go wrong. Today, Microsoft is making operating systems for cars, fer chrissakes :D

If you have a mechanical fuel pump, a carburator, a basic points & coil kettering ignition, and a simple generator or an alternator even, you were good to go. What else could go wrong?

Case example 1: The VW Beetle. Not the plastic Golf IV in drag, but the real thing. 100k miles easy. 200k miles not uncommon. Heck, even a poorly maintained piece of 1970 junk 1500 I had, made it past 250k, and was finally laid to rest due to rust holes in the floorpan. The engine lived on in another car. There were no signs of anyone ever rebuilding it. (Every nut and bolt were rusted solid).

Case example 2: Well, this is an exception from the 80:s. The Mercedes. Not uncommon at all to hear them go a MILLION miles. Granted, that would usually mean an engine and tranny rebuild at some point.

3: Volvo has had models that easily made 500k and even close to a million. 4: Even my friend's Mitsubishi Lancer from the 80's got past 500k.

Come to the 90's, and I don't think they could. 2000, and I'm pretty certain we won't see 'million mile' cars anymore. Mercedes quality has gone down the drain years ago, they're living off of their legacy and deserved good name they got in the years past.

Modern cars are packed full of useless junk that not only creates more need for maintenance and potential breakdowns, it alienates the operator from actual driving skills, and makes him a passenger with no brains, rather than a driver.

I'm just ranting I guess, you do have a point.

I'm just so tired of where the industry has gone and how unexciting cars have become. I can't remember seeing a new car that made me think : WOW, I gotta get me one of those. I get that with cars older than myself. (I'm a kiddie though, only 35)

There a few advantages to lower tech cars but they are far outweighed by the advantages this technology brings regarding efficiency, longevity, reliability, performance and convenience to modern vehicles.

My first car ws a 1971 Nova with a 250 CI inline six. It was about as simple as they came. I had plenty of issues with it. Before it hit

100k miles it was rusting through, I rebuilt the head, it was a constant battle to keep it in a good state of tune and the gas mileage wasn't all that great. It was fairly reliable though and never left me stranded anywhere.

Many foreign cars were built better than domestics. Especially after WWII. The same still applies though that the modern versions of these cars are much better in almost every way.

The fact is 99.99% of driver wouldn't want to keep a car for a million miles so that benchmark isn't worth much. It would take a person over

66 years to put that many miles on a car driving at a rate of 15,000 miles per year. Who would want to drive the same car for 66 years? Your definition of quality is very narrow and when that definition is broadened the new cars stack up very well against their predecessors.

Once again I disagree. When I look at the crash worthiness of new cars I am amazed at their quality. Having air bags, self tensioning seat belts, crumple zones, roll over protection etc. is invaluable, IMO. Having the ability for a third party to know if you have crashed on a deserted road and being able to send help directly to your location is a wonderful thing. Getting good mileage with very good performance is another perk of applying technology.

We have had very good reliability from the newer cars. The '94 T-Bird we had went 190k miles until our son totaled it. I have a '94 Explorer with 186k miles that is still going strong. The 2003 Sable we have has

90k miles and has been nearly trouble free. It also delivers great performance from its 3.0L DOHC V-6. It handles fairly well too. It is an all around great car and we paid $18k for it brand new and it has leather interior, sunroof and every option available for that year.

There are plenty of exciting cars for sale. There are performance models of all varieties. Look at the GT500. It has more performance than ANY Mustang ever produced and it is for sale TODAY, not during the

1960s. There are four wheel drive, turbocharged subcompacts that will perform as well as Corvettes of just a decade ago. The Camaro is coming back and we have a Challenger on the showroom floors. I think if you look around you will find a lot of performance and at all price points. Heck, even the current base Mustang has the same horsepower level as the old 5.0L Fox cars.

Anecdotal evidence aside, the average car coming off of the average American assembly line in the 1960s was a piece of junk the day it was built. Cars in the 70s were worse.

Because the Japanese were kicking our collective butts, somewhere in the

1980s quality became Job One. And it wasn't until well into the 90s that the Big Three finally got a handle on this whole quality thing.

The vast number of cars built today are aimed squarely at the mass market driver, what I call point-and-shoot cars. Get in, start it up, drive to work. In a few years, all of those ads and incentives convince these folks to trade up to a new model. But, through innovation and government regulation, these point-and-shoot cars are also designed to protect these drivers from themselves. That's fine, since these folks aren't really into motoring, they just want reliable transportation. And more air bags and cupholders, apparently.

A very small minority actually likes cars. These people could have bought any model from any year over the past five decades and kept it beautiful, kept it running like a clock, and kept racking up the miles beyond 100,000 or 200,000 or much more. These are the cars that we see at shows, that we see tooling down a back road on a sunny day. While the build quality of previous decades was suspect at best, no car was built to fail within four, five, or six years. Every car came with a little book that describes the care and feeding of the animal, and owners ignore that little book at their own expense.

I'm somewhere in between. I own two Fox Mustangs, both coming up on their

15th birthdays. Neither is a show car, both are daily drivers, neither is babied. I have regular maintenance done, and when things break, they get shop time. For whatever reason (that I still haven't fully figured out), I am in love with this particular model/year and haven't yet been pursuaded to trade up.

BUT... How can I argue with the new Corvette? How can I look at the new Mustang GT, without getting goosebumps? I even see the attraction of the Nissan Altima! Toyota has nothing that stirs my blood, nor Honda, but I'm not their target market, am I?

There are a small number of cars built today that can get me excited, and there have been times that I thought all cars like them would disappear completely, given the rise of influence of the insurance and government regulations. And now the growing Green forces threaten them even more with extinction. Yet, for some reason, performance is growing across all lines, with V6 engines putting out the power of V8s.

I have no doubt that any car built TODAY, in the hands of a caring owner, could easily go 500,000 miles in the years to come. The sad truth is that the bulk of new cars today will be recycled within ten to twenty years, just as previous generations before them. It's the nature of consumables...

dwight

I have a 1970 Nova right now.. 230ci six, 2-speed auto tranny. 4 door grandma car. Got it cheap, owner said there's nothing wrong with it... well I found a hole and pieces missing from one piston and another one headed the same way. The cheapest pistons I found were $8 a piece :D I didn't get those.

6 new pistons later (and rod bearings, because the opportunity was there), it was back on the road. Yes it has some rust issues.

Oh yea, I should have mentioned my european origins :) We don't think very highly of american cars past the early 70's.

Which brings me to the point I made earlier: the standards have changed. Lesser quality has become acceptable, and the norm.

All of the above give people a false sense of security, and somehow they think they can drive like maniacs. (I live in Florida, come see how it is down here). All the safety equipment and automated functions mean the driver needs less and less driving skills, and when the time comes when he needs them, they are not there. VW studied and designed crumple zones in the 50's. :D

Mileage has not improved significantly for decades. Engine efficiency may have, but the vehicles also got heavier (because of all the extra junk), so you don't benefit from the efficiency.

You sound like a man who takes care of his cars.

Kinda nice, but not exciting. I don't have strong feelings either way about it. Still has solid rear axle, and no independent rear suspension? No new mustang today has one? Why did they cheap out?

Yes, I'm still a member of a Subaru club even after selling my turbo wagon. Friend had a 2004 STi. Nice car, but it too requires some noticeable upgrades to start working as it 'should'. And at the end, you still end up with a plastic tub that doesn't look any different from a Corolla. Except for that god-ugly, ridiculous wing that just has to go :)

Disappointed already. It looked ok in the few pics I saw early on, but something is missing. I like the nose.

That at least looks good. I don't know it well enough to have formed an opinion yet. I'm worried that they ruined it somehow anyway.

Performance isn't everything though. I like it to look good inside and out, handle well, be functional as a daily driver, and maybe even be reliable.

Of course my last requirement make the above comnination impossible: I want it cheap :)

Mine had a two speed auto too. You're bringing back memories. Some are fond ones and some aren't.

How many miles are on that 1970 Nova you mentioned above? Getting 100k miles from the older cars was considered good. Getting 100k miles from a new car is a given and most likely 200k is more than reasonable. Plus, the bodies of the new cars have much better rust protection and the chassis can actually last long enough to run for 200k miles or for several decades, whichever comes first. The machining tolerances today are much tighter than they were decades ago which adds to longevity. Remember back in the day that many engines had to be blueprinted and balanced to really make high rpm horsepower? Today there are factory motors spinning to 7k and beyond and lasting for a very long time doing it.

The cars are getting so well made today that many fire and rescue companies are finding their rescue equipment can't pry the doors lose or cut through the steel. They have to basically dismantle the car in order to get to the occupants in many accidents. The formulation of the steel used in most cars today didn't even exist a decade ago.

Mileage has improved a great deal considering the horsepower produced. One area I am surprised about it that they haven't made cars significantly lighter.

I don't obsess over them at all. I just perform basic maintenance. This is all that is needed to get close to 200k out of about any new car sold today. When one looks at reliability and longevity there really isn't much of a gap between vehicles nowadays across all price points. They all can be run for around 200k or more with basic routine maintenance. In reality this is more lifespan than 99.9% of the drivers need or want.

You can find just about whatever performance car you desire today. They can be inexpensive, basic drive trains, IRS rear wheel drive, four wheel drive etc. It is all available.

... and a 1960s GTO was really just a Tempest with a few badges and hood scoop. At least the WRX has some real guts and the bones to make it a really outstanding performer.

Anyone that doesn't like the new Camaro, Mustang or Challenger but likes the old muscle cars is just never going to be satisfied, IMO, with anything new. These cars are good looking and outperform their predecessors by leaps and bounds. Compare the new ZR1 Vette (Blue Devil I believe) with ANYTHING in its past and it just literally stomps the crap out of any previous model.

A Mustang GT will meet all of your goals. It is reliable, performs very well and is reasonably function as a daily driver. Even gas mileage is decent if you keep your foot out of it. It sounds to me like it is your personal taste regarding style that makes you dislike the new cars and not necessarily their engineering and performance.

Don't know. Too lazy to go look and I think the odometer rolls over at

99.999? Hmm. That would be an indicator that not much more was expected of them... lol Still, 38 years old and still runs ok and looks half decent. Everything works. (after the piston swap, but it did run before that too)

Yea I suppose that's true.

Sloppy tolerances don't necessarily translate to poor longevity in my mind. If an engine was designed for loose tolerances (dictated by mass production limitations of yesteryear), then I'm sure it would last a long time. Add low power output into the mix, and you get 300k engines that just refuse to die. Old V8's, the VW beetle boxer, some 4-banger diesel engines.. Not very sophisticated, not very powerful for the displacement, but they take you from A to B for decades.

When you increase the power output and load, the wear and tear increases.

I'm mostly familiar with old VW's. The factory apparently started using noticeably more recycled steel in th elate 60's and early 70's. Those cars are almost all total rustbuckets, structural rust damage everywhere. 50's and 60's models, even non-hobbyist cars, are in much better shape. 70's and 80's were bad... for european and japanese cars at least. 90's wasn't that much better, but zinc plated body parts started to make way into mass produced cars (Volvo, Audi, the higher end vehicles first)

Mileage stayed pretty much the same, give or take a little, and vehicle performance stayed virtually unchanged. Weight increased, and the improved fuel economy & horsepower covered the gap. I don't know where the weight comes from, more steel and interior materials? Thicker glass? All the 'new technology' that you now have to lug around with you? There are a few exceptions in the family vehicle sector, some small diesels get awesome mileage, a lot better than their comparable predecessors. But we are still looking at 20-30 something MPG new passenger cars, while 40mpg vehicles were available 40 years ago. It takes a hybrid to get over 40 these days. Back to increased weight and performance again :) One would think that with all the modern technology, we would know how to make parts out of lighter materials without sacrificing strenght. Some attempts have been made (aluminum trailing arms on VW passats etc. needed replacing after 20k and were soon discontinued) but still the weights have increased by 50% easily over the past 1-2 decades. (european and asian cars)

I guess I was born a generation or two too late :D I do like the looks of the latest Mustang, more as time passes. The challenger looks very very promising. The camaro sort of lacks something, can't say what it is.

Style makes a big difference yes. I don't like cars that disappear into the gray mass the second you blink your eye. There are mechanically interesting cars out there that do just that. Then there are nice looking cars that leave room for improvement in the performance or handling area, and that's a big disappointment too.

I have to admit that it's my personality to always try to improve on something and make it more to my liking. Nothing is good enough right off the showroom floor. Or used car lot, for that matter. I would modify old classics just the same.

I guess you just can't please me. LOL