Roger and Paul. There has certainly been tremendous progress in the emission
control. Without these advances, the air quality would have been very low
given the very high number of cars (we can fill pages on this). In order to
fulfill that requirement, electronic engine controls are necessary, which make
diagnosis and repairs of modern cars very diffucult, as Paul says. Also,
improved manufacturing methods allow complex high output engines (twin cam, 4
valve per cylinder) to be made cheaper and more accessible to the average
consumer, and improved lubricants allow these high specific output engines to
have acceptable life. Also, advances in the design methods often allow certain
component reliabiity to be better than it used to be (especially in respect to
accesories like alternators or water pumps). However, there are several steps
backwards. A high quality car from the sixties (and sometimes from the
fifties) is designed in such a way that the overall durability can indeed be
much higher than practically any modern car (this term is referred to as
"overdesign"). In the same time, the components are often designed such that
they can be serviced infinite times. As a result, certain older cars can be
operated indefinately. Modern cars may have better short term reliability, but
they also have a "design life". The same improved design techniques are used
to contain costs in order to maximize profit, which results in limitations that
will not show up until many years after the car is sold to the first original
owner. For those who have worked on 440's for example may have noticed that
many parts like pistons, rods, rings, bearings, look like parts from a heavy
duty diesel. When you dissassemble a modern engine, you will instantly see the
differece. All the parts are thinner and more delicate, and ... cheaper. This
is a great example of cost containment. The bodies made out of super thin
steel and bumpers and grills out of plastic are other such examples.
People often say that their modern car has done 200K miles, while their cars
they used to drive thirty years back had problems at less than 100K. That may
have been true because a) there were some low quality cars back then, b) modern
lubricants are so much better than 20-30 years back and c) driving habbits are
different now, with long trips more frequent, allowing longer mileage and lower
wear per mile. As many may know, the record on mileage on any car is held by a
66 volvo at 2 million miles with only one engine rebuild. Its unikely an
Imperial will ever approach this mileage, mainly due to the fuel cost. Even as
cheap as fuel is in the US, accumulating such high mileage requires a LOT of
driving which means a huge gas bill.
D^2
Quoting Roger Farrar <tenpalms@xxxxxxx>:
> I think this was a sincere comment and
> as such deserves an answer. Bill, as I'm
> sure you realize there's a lot more to the
> "junk" under the hood of a modern car
> than most of us ever think about. Current technology and design allows
> specific power output and levels of reliability that could only be dreamed
> of
> in the days when our beloved Imps were
> built. Most importantly, for our health and the health of our children and
> grandchildren, the level of emissions is
> a miniscule fraction of what our Imps
> emit, even in the best of tune. And I mean literally, by a couple of orders
> of
> magnitude.
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