Quote:
Originally Posted by DieselAddict
There are plenty of newer cars with over 200K miles holding up very well. I'd say most of today's cars will outlast their predecessors. There are some exceptions, for example the W123 cars had better rust protection than the early W210's, but generally today 200K miles is not exceptional whereas in the 70's it was, otherwise why did odometers only have 5 digits back then? I know that my OM606 with 136K miles isn't burning a drop of oil whereas my OM616 with a little more miles was burning a noticeable amount. From this forum it seems all the oil burning/blowby threads are concerning the OM616/7 engines whereas the newer ones don't appear to have such problems even if they have more miles on them.
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The technology behind the drivetrains is evolving and getting better but everything else about the production of todays cars is much cheaper using plastic to make parts that were metal, using glue to hold a car together instead of welding(bmw).
Gluing a frame together, making fenders out of plastic are all methods to reduce the life of a car since most customers today dont care about longevity, they care mostly about a solid drivetrain to get them to point A to point B. I realize that gluing frames togethers and making parts such as fenders out of plastic are to be seen as technoloigical advances since the plastics and glues they are making are supposed to be better than using metal and welding. But at the end of the day the cars of today are tin cans compared to the older cars in terms of build qauilty.