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Say goodbye to old cars

The march of technology is relentless.

When I bought my first car, back in the early 1970s, I splurged the princely sum of $60 for the tired old 1938 Morris 8 that was my pride and joy.

In terms of technology, it was incredibly simple although it did boast hydraulic brakes, which were quite new when this car was made.

A very simple four-cylinder side-valve engine with points and coil ignition, a very basic carburetor and convective water cooling. Yeah, that's right, it didn't even have a water-pump.

The three speed gearbox had no synchromesh on first and only occasionally on second and third. Clutchless gear changes were just as easy as using the pedal so most of the time my left foot wasn't involved in the process.

This was a car that could be fixed "on the fly" whenever something went wrong and the only tools you needed were an adjustable wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer.

Despite being well over 30 years old when I bought it, this car was still going strong and served me well for quite some time. I really wish I'd never sold it, although I did make $40 on the deal, scoring a whole $100 when I passed it on to its next owner.

The cool thing about these older cars is that, even today, they can be maintained and repaired with little difficulty. Go to any vintage car meeting and you'll see that there are still a good assortment of vehicles from the 1970s and earlier that run and drive thanks to the efforts of keen enthusiasts.

Sadly, I'm not quite so sure that in 30 or 40 years time we'll be seeing any of today's new cars still on the road or in running condition.

Why is that?

Well modern cars have become incredibly reliant on technology that is being phased out just as quickly as it was phased in. What's more, getting parts for a vehicle that's over 10 years old has become quite problematic in some cases.

Even worse, the reality is that many of these parts are now reliant on computers for their operation and even their installation -- with onboard electronics that have to be paired with the car's ECU before they'll function. This is allegedly done to reduce the theft of vehicles that are then broken up for parts but I think it far more likely it's done to increase the manufacturer's and dealer's profit margins.

Even today's expensive supercars and other "collectable" vehicles are far more likely to end up on the scrapheap or simply become static "display" models as the years tick on.

Do we really think that Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborgini and other manufacturers are going to keep a full inventory of very expensive spare parts for the many decades that owners like to keep and collect these cars?

What's more, although you can get a set of bespoke piston rings made for a fairly trivial sum when you want to recondition the engine in your 1938 Morris 8, some 85 years after it was first made -- how easy will it be to create a whole new ECU or some special bit of circuitry buried deep inside the dual-clutch sequential automatic gearbox on your new McLaren once it fails?

More of a worry than the mechanicals however, is probably the fate of the new hybrid cars on our roads. Whilst an ICE can be expected to last many decades if cared for and regularly maintained you can guarantee that the battery in a hybrid or EV will be toast after as little as 10 years. Given the pace at which things are moving, where will you get a replacement for that?

Even at a regular consumer level, the spares and repair situation with modern cars is getting pretty bad.

The cost of anything other than regular maintenance items is phenomenal now. Since we replaced "mechanics" with "technicians" the labour rate has quadrupled or more and thanks to manufacturers locking much of their vehicles functionality behind technological firewalls the back-yard mechanic doesn't have much hope of repairing some brands and models.

As I trawl YouTube for related content I note that there are some well documented instances where cars less than 10 years old and with little more than 100,000Km on the clock have been written off because the cost of repairs for even relatively trivial faults has become so very high.

The other big complaint is the cost of new cars. Thanks to the mountains of technology that now forms an essential part of every vehicle that rolls off the assembly line, cars are incredibly expensive these days. Even worse, it seems that in many cases that fancy hi-tech stuff has a very finite lifetime. Just ask any owner of a BMW that is more than 10 years old and they'll tell you what a constant companion the "Check Engine" light has become and how much it costs to have it extinguished.

Once again I wonder if the world isn't ready for a super-simple, very cheap, no-frills budget vehicle that is highly repairable. Perhaps this time however, it will be an EV.

Carpe Diem folks!

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