New cars definitely are better from the standpoint of performance and longevity, but I don't care for the styling on many of them preferring the older models instead.

As far as the older cars go, I think the quality was there but material science and manufacturing have improved since then. Cars of the 60s and earlier were lucky to make it much past 100K miles. The new engines run cleaner so there's less crap going into the engine oil and that translates into less wear on engine parts. I never see black oil coming out of a gasoline engine when drained unless it hasn't been changed in a very long time. Also the ignition and fuel systems have come a long way. It's not too often these days to drive around with a car either misfiring badly or overfueling because it just doesn't happen as much as it used to with points and carburetors. Not that those can't be made to work well, but the owner had to keep them up all the time. They weren't set-and-forget like a modern car.

One of my old auto repair manuals that has cars from 1935-1947 in it had a lubrication diagram for a Cadillac car that stated that the suspension lube points were to be serviced every 1000 miles. That's about every few weeks in today's driving. Now we have "lifetime" front end parts that last quite a while. Even if they only made it 50K miles it's still the equivalent of 50 lube services on that old Caddy not to mention the labor charge to grease the very many parts that required service every thousand miles.

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Erich Loepke
2010 Ford Focus
Currently Benz-less

You've seen the IIHS video of the old and new chevy offset FE collision?

Here's an old and new(er) Cadillac crash test, but truly head-on.



In the event of a collision, I'd far rather be in the newer car.


The IIHS is by far the more painful to watch, since the 'Bel Air is in pristine condition. The old clapped-out Cadillac beater Stuntbusters used is a "so what".