Why does it seem like older cars are much better than newer cars?
My uncle has a 2003 Honda, a 1910 Ford Model T, and he has a 1951 Cadillac. All of which had been parked in his garage since 2004. Well just recently he wanted to pull them out because he wanted to see if they started up. So far the Model T started up wonderfully once we put new gas in the tank, and the same went for the Cadillac: started up beautifully. The Honda on the other hand did not start up. Apparently the heat had made nearly everything electrical (including buttons) unusable, therefore nothing electrical will work on the car. So the car won't start. He was told that it would cost about $1000 to fix the car in electrical part replacement. Why is this? Even with newer cars this is the issue. If something breaks on it(usually electrical), you need a special guy with a special tool that works a special job fix it. With older cars all you need to do is go to Advanced Auto and pick up a part, or go on Ebay to find the part. Or go to a car show and find a part there. And you already have tools to fix it. I also find older cars more traditional to what a car should look like. Newer cars fail to give off that look because everything on it screams "Made in China and at a cheap price by machines". Older cars are gems that were assembled in America by people that cared. Too bad you don't see that anymore.
I'm not trying to rant, but this sort of thing really ticks me off. Everyone says that newer cars are better, but so far the older cars are proving to be better.
Everything built back then was made to last… Now everything is made so you have to keep buying new stuff cause it falls apart so fast.
Some old cars fall apart, too. Or rather, they did fall apart, and the old cars you see now are the ones that didn't.
The Ford T was built to be repairable by anybody, but it couldn't do much over 40 miles per hour. The 1913 Mercer Raceabout could do 100 (Jay Leno has one), and the Stanley that Fred Marriott raced in 1906 was doing over 120 when it became airborne and crashed. (Fred survived.) First car to fly. Could have been doing over 140. Nobody knew for sure. The Stanley steam engine had only 14 moving parts.
Some of the older cars were very nice but not easy to repair. I had a 1969 BMW 1600 that ate repairs like they were ice cream, and later a 1983 Honda Prelude that worked well only because we had a good mechanic.
Enjoy your 40 HP model T then. The 2 1/2 ton Caddy was a bit peppier with 190 HP. Those engines were stone age simple. Newer cars are complicated and depend on electronics. Under all that though, you still have pistons and valves, but 2003 was a very bad year for Honda transmissions. If it was a 1998 you'd be driving it- as long as it got new cambelts on time, and would outrun that Caddy through the Grapevine and have gas left over when it made it to L.A.
Newer cars are nothing but monuments to humanities laziness and dependency on "useful" (but lets be honest, in reality useless) modern technology. Older cars are far more beautiful and elegant (not to mention practical). Note that I am a 16 year old and I know this, which is kind of sad if you think about it. I hope cars stop getting more and more ugly and impractical at least by the end of my generation.
- Why gasoline better than diesel? Over 11.7 million cars sells gasoline than 2.9 million less selling diesel cars in the US But can't find diesel honda, Toyota, nissan, or other Asia cars.
- Why don't used cars seem to matter about the make in pricing? I see Hondas with more mileage and older than BMWs priced at the same price (meaning a 2004 BMW priced at the same as a 2004 Honda.) Why don't the prices fluctuate much for used cars, but it's immensely different for new cars?
- Why does it appear used cars are more expensive than new? For example. I'm looking at a 2019 Honda City, new it's $17,990 drive away if I look on car sales the 2017 model is even $19,000. Ok the 2019 is a manual price but that's a huge difference and 2 years on. Please tell me what I'm missing?
- Why do older cars make that wind up noise when reversing? I have always wondered… It was real prevalent on saturns and hondas. They make like a high pitch winding noise and I just wondered why.