Modern Cars - Are they really so much better?

A modern car isn’t difficult to maintain than any other car, you take it to a garage and they will sort any larger maintenance out. As long you check the oil, tyres and windscreen wash that’s all you basically need to do.

Yes, there’s not much else to do to maintain the modern car Floydy. However, there’s also the fact that nobody can do anything else with regard to servicing as it’s impossible these days. Anything else is subject to hourly labour rates of £100 an hour, not exactly affordable for anyone on the basic State Pension of £155 a week. OK when you are working and earning but when on a small pension it’s very much a different story. :slight_smile:

You’re right, Baz. I wasn’t really talking about the money aspect - I don’t have very much myself working in my meagrely-paid desperate job.
I understand that it’s more expensive these days to do it yourself because everything is linked up electronically to an inbuilt computer and it isn’t just the expense, it’s having the tools and know-how to perform repairs yourself. I haven’t a clue about any of that and costly as it is, my car is essential to get me to work and so needs to be maintained.

You could argue though that an older car would be just as expensive to maintain because more things would probably go wrong with it causing repairs to be needed more often, so it’s a catch-22 situation really. I take the benefit of the doubt option and drive a newer car for peace of mind. The only way I was able to buy one was from inheritance. before this one, I’ve always had them on finance or driven bangers. :cool:

Asian cars?

I agree with Bruce, Asian cars compare very well with
Euro cars on the reliability question, and on the running
costs and affordability front out score euro cars by a wide
margin!
I suppose in the uk this difference is not so evident due to
the tarriffs imposed by eu on imports from outside the eu.
If we ever get out of eu this should change!

 Regards      Donkeyman!

You had wipers? :lol:

I can remember the windscreen washer being a rubber button on the floor which you pushed with your foot. :-p

I recall, note only recall as it was in my grandfather’s ancient car, the wipers being operated with a piece of string in through the driver’s window pulled up and down!

That car also had ‘floorboards’, real wooden ones that lifted right up one day when he drove through floodwater in a dip in the road! All the fun and games of the days when there was no technology at all and hardly any basics either!

As for any ignition method for starting the car – that old car was started with a starting handle, woe betide you if you cranked it wrongly as it could easily break your wrist! :slight_smile:

You had it lucky! My dad had to throw a cup of tea on his windscreen from his side window :lol:

:lol:

Yes, luckily, I’m not quite that old. :lol:

Talking of strings through the window, the accelerator pedal snapped off on my Dolomite. To get home, I had a piece of string tied to the accelerator, on the carb, which through the bonnet grill and I accelerated by hand to get me home. :lol:

Hi

Cars are cars, a means of transport for me and my fishing tackle.

I buy ex works cars and run them until they die.

Depreciation , I buy for cash and put £30 a week into an account and buy another one when they die.

I have absolutely no interest in driving a flash car or impressing anyone.

I have far more important things to spend my money on.

When I started to drive petrol was 4 gal for a pound , non of this ltr measurement rubbish back then.The pound was a note Not a coin

Remember when they said petrol would never be more than £2 per gallon? :cry:

But my God, they is ugly.:lol:

Definitely I can remember that, one of my cars has a 20-gallon tank which at 39p per litre (£1.78 per gallon) used to cost £35 to fill in 1984, then came the rapid increase in fuel costs and that then cost a small fortune. Today it would cost £118 to fill. With fuel consumption of a 2.8 litre engine also being far less than today’s cars (28-30 mpg on a run, 18-20 mpg round town) it was time to buy a more economical car.

Nowadays when we see the price of fuel in litres it’s a psychological ‘con’ as it hides the true cost of fuel per gallon. I first really noticed this some years’ ago when filling an old gallon container for the lawn mower. Today unleaded is around £1.30 a litre, using the conversion of 4.546 litres to a gallon, the cost of a gallon is £5.90 with £2.63 of this being tax. Astounding isn’t it!

https://www.nextgreencar.com/car-tax/fuel-duty/

It wasn’t just Fords it was any car that used the inlet manifold vacuum to run the wipers - my 1947 Hillman did it too, it nearly threw the blades off the car when you went down hill, though I did like the fact that you could operate the wipers individually or as a pair (they didn’t need to be synchronised because their arcs didn’t overlap)

Personally I think one of the big mistakes in car design was removing the dip switch from the floor to the steering column. Another irritant with all European cars is that the controls on the steering column were clearly designed for countries that drive on the right.

Asian cars also lasted better on Australian roads :wink:

I had a mate who had a Dolomite,exactly the same problem he had.He got rid of the car in the end,mind he went through a hedge backwards after losing it on a corner,wrote it off.

Personally I think one of the big mistakes in car design was removing the dip switch from the floor to the steering column. Another irritant with all European cars is that the controls on the steering column were clearly designed for countries that drive on the right.

Nowadays lots of cars come with high beam assist, that automatically switches from main to high beam, my car has this and I think it’s handy, t senses if cars are coming toward you or if you are behind another car, so as not to dazzle other drivers, mine works well…

Strange, most are styled in Europe.

Ugly?

Beauty  is  in  the  eye  of  the  beholder  Spitty!

 Regards      Donkeyman!

Interesting. it must have been a manufacturing fault. I remember my local mechanic charged me £15 to strip it down and re weld the pedal back on.:-p It also suffered a similar fate when I drove it over a deep pot hole. :cry:

As you say, we are not aware of this now that it’s all done in litres. Unbelievable. :cry: