Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Dirty Habit]

My pet hate about moderns is the electronics. I don't believe that so many are needed and I wonder who they benefit. Take for example an immobiliser. OK car thefts have dropped dramatically, but do insurance premiums reflect that? I don't think they do. And when they fail you are faced with a huge bill. The unit may only be the size of a pack of cigarettes but by the time you have bought a replacement and had it coded at a main dealers, you will have spent more than the cost of a 40" flat screen TV.
It is not rust or worn out mechanical parts that are sending cars to the scrappers.........it is the masses of high priced electronic components.
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1964 International Harvester

[victor 101]

My brother has just traded his Honda in on the scrappage scheme, engine was good, but they wanted £1500 to replace a air con pump, and another £1500 to fix the fault in the antilock brakes, my son has a Fiat Multipla and they want £150 for an ign key with transponder.

[Brian M]

Don't start me off about electronics on moderns.

My previous Jeep Cherokee only let me down once, when the "Crankshaft Motion Sensor" failed.

This wondrous invention stops fuel getting through and prevents sparks until it detects that the flywheel is turning. Funny thing is that when I turn the starter, I actually want petrol and sparks to be provided! If it is there to stop the petrol and sparks when the engine is not rotating, after an accident for instance, surely it could be overridden when the starter motor is in use?

At least the replacement was only £80 and can be fitted by a competent amateur.
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Brian
1970 Volvo Amazon and 1978 Safari 15-4 Caravan
Classic Safari Forum: www.classicsafaris.co.uk

[Riley Blue]

Right now I dislike the fact that the household shopping car, a Fiesta, has a heated front screen but my Audi A4 doesn't.

[clan chieftain]

A set of injectors for a Mondeo diesel is over £1000. Then they have to be programmed in. Gone are the days when you stuck in a set of 9Ys.They fitted nearly everything.
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The Clan Chieftain

[Rick]

I'd echo my dislike of modern cars' over-complexity. Ok it helps their economy I suppose, but if they weren't so heavy in the first place, they'd produce good mpg without all the electrickery. As for gimmicks, I can't stand them.

Moderns are good for covering distances easily and swiftly, but most mainstream motors are so uninvolving that wherever possible I'll run an oldie instead. Safety improvements also have to be mentioned, although people still seem to crash quite regularly, even in moderns (I suppose they have more chance of getting out though).

RJ
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[Keith D]

Nobody loves old cars more than I do and I thoroughly enjoy driving them. Manual gears require a certain amount of skill to accomplish smooth quiet gearchanges, especially with crash boxes, or where the syncro is badly worn. The cars are full of quirky little habits that need mastering! And they do not offend my eyes! The styling in most cases is far more interesting and distinctive than most "moderns". At the moment, the only current car I find even the slightest bit attractive is the new BMW Z4, and that is way out of my price range! The current "hatch" epidemic leaves me horrified!

However, lets get serious!

Breakdowns are very rare in modern cars. My own experience has been that problems that occur initially, until the car has bedded down, are covered by the warranty which in most cases in Australia is 5 years.
I like air conditioning, power steering on big cars, power disc brakes, five or six speed manual gearboxes and fuel injection.

Replacement costs for injectors may be expensive, but they so rarely go wrong. I owned my Mitsubishi Lancer coupe for 200,000 kilometres and the only time the injectors were touched, was a clean out at about 100,000 km. That cost me a mere $130 in 2001. (About 50 pounds at that time) I had a Mk 2 Jag back in the sixties, when it was almost new and apart from the fact that it loved to boil in our climate, I learned to loathe SU carburettors. The Mk 2 had two of these disasters that always started fighting each other within a few miles of a tune up!

I don't have to suffer the cold conditions that you do in the UK, but I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the useless heaters in the old cars, (generally only fitted as extras or options) at least in the mass production models during the fifties. We used to call them "fug stirrers"! Then there was the wonderful windscreen wipers made by Lucas for Austin (and others) driven by a piece of wire jerking backwards and forwards, that assumed it would never rain! Austin brakes were never very good! My A40 is fitted with much larger A70 brakes which give me a better chance of stopping!

Despite what I have said, I love restoring the oldies and driving them at the weekend or on holidays, but I certainly prefer modern stuff when going to work in the rush hour or on a serious journey!

Keith

[bob2]

I tend to agree with Keith but I too think that modern cars have too much electronic gadgets and sensors, although when you have the software and equipment at hand its quite easy to diagnose and remedy to faults.
I have a friend with a very well equipped garage and adjusting such faults on moderns was a doddle!!

[Ashley]

They all seem so similar to drive to me, the Germans are often as harsh as a series one Land Rover, but otherwise all are excellent, but hideous in my opinion. Dreadful colours and utterly horrid styling so that wherever you park them, they ruin the landscape. Old cars look as though they belong, they just aren't very good cars!

[ukdave2002]

So looking at the majority of comments;
We like the fact that modern cars are incredibly reliable, start every time, have long gaps between servicing , cost far less to maintain than 30 years ago, easy to fix, will do very high mileages without needing major work , etc etc….

But we don’t like the technology that delivers it all !!

I wonder if there had been a “Classic Horse & Cart” forum 100 years ago would they have similar thing to say about these new fangled cars !!!

[Dirty Habit]

[lowdrag]

A couple of years back Mercedes, dismayed by the breakdowns on the E class, had their boffins take one apart and try and sort it out. The result was they took out six hundred electronic relays and circuits to make the car reliable again. That being said, my old W202 has 200,000 on the clock and runs (touch wood) perfectly without even the injectiors needing cleaning and strangely only two glow plugs have failed.

But what I hate about new cars isn't the electronics, it's the styling in the main. I spoke with a senior Jaguar designer and he said that because of CAD-CAM and the crush zones the only way really to distinguish cars today is by the grille, which is why Audi have made theirs more obtrusive for example. He reckons that underneath most are fairly the same in design to get the coveted five stars in the crash tests.

So, we're safer, we are comfier, but being human we don't like being mollycoddled I guess.

[Jim.Walker]

Firstly, I don't like the massive depreciation that goes with them. Then I don't like the power steering that seems compulsory these days and which overPOWERS all feedback which might tell you that you are on ice or slippery surfaces. Of course I accept that large, heavy vehicles benefit from it. But shopping trolley sized cars??

AND they make driving so easy it seems very little skill is needed to progress smoothly, and that is boring on a long run. No sense of satisfaction when the run is completed. Is there any wonder so many drivers go to sleep at the wheel?
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Quote from my late Dad:- You only need a woman and a car and you have all the problems you
are ever likely to want". Computers had not been invented then!

[peter scott]

[The_Boy_Richie]

Love the reliability of my Honda Accord and would only ever buy Japanese modern cars now.
A reliable modern makes classic car ownership a viable proposition for me. There's no way I could do my job and travel from Cheshire to the North of Cumbria in a day in any of my classics.

The Honda is a tool and the classics are for fun....