Remember waiting anxiously for the new cars to hit the showrooms? Spy photos (in magazines!) of next year’s model were little hits of adrenaline as we hoped to see what was soon to come. We read and memorized predictions of horsepower and performance. New cars were important milestones each year, sleek, redesigned, more powerful, faster, a sign of progress, hope and optimism, … but no more.
Cars have become mundane. Excitement is long gone. It’s almost impossible to distinguish one model year from the next or one manufacturer from another and no one waits for the annual model change with anticipation. High performance halo cars are throwbacks to the muscle car days of the sixties as auto companies focus on electrics and seem eager to shut down internal combustion engine production as quickly as possible.
Auto racing in all forms is declining in popularity, it’s so unsustainable, it’s not green, it’s carbon intensive and young people have other things to do, finding video games of racing more exciting than an actual race with real cars, the sounds of real engines and the smells of burning gasoline and rubber.
New cars aren’t for racing, engine modifications are restricted, repair information a closely guarded secret.
The big battles among auto manufacturers are for who controls the dashboard, the electronics and who owns the massive amounts of data collected when you drive. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft? Those don’t sound much like auto companies, and do you really want a car that tracks your every move, records everything about how you drive and will divulge that information to the cloud?
Think back over the last two years, do you doubt a fully integrated and connected electric car would be shut down remotely if it was decided you needed to be locked down? Maybe you plug into a charging station and it refuses to charge your vehicle because you shouldn’t be this far from home.
Remember when a car was a car?
Cars have become transportation pods, fully connected for entertainment, communication and able to find their way, so you never have to fully engage your brain. You’re belted, air bagged, and protected by controlled crush zones should some other pod run into you and it will then call for assistance. For some of us, cars have become an unappealing and tightly controlled appliance. I liked them more when they were just cars.
An old car, powered by an internal combustion engine, able to be refueled anywhere in a few minutes and totally off the grid is what we used to have and it gave all of us the freedom to travel anywhere at anytime. It was fixable. The systems were not so complex that repair was impossible without a computer attached. A well equipped toolbox and the knowledge you carried in your head could get you through the majority of breakdowns. It’s not a dream, this was normal not so long ago and it can be a reality again, if your next car is an old car.
Be human again
Old cars require a fully engaged driver, you might even have to know how to manually change gears. You find your way from place to place with a knowledge of where you are going and a paper map. It was a great way to spend your time on the road and it can be again. All of the capabilities of today’s in-dash electronics are still yours if you carry a smartphone, but once in a while you should turn it off. Be human again. If you never experienced what this kind of driving was like, you should try it, but if you’re of a certain age, you remember when it was the norm and what today’s new car drivers miss.
Buy a time machine
Old cars are still available, parts are still available, repair manuals are easy to find, they’re waiting to take us back to when driving a car was an enjoyable, fully human activity. They’re time machines, not some movie version DeLorean outfitted with weird hoses and wires, an old Chevy or Ford will do just fine.
Maybe this should be your year to travel back in time with an old car. Now, if we could only find those service stations with gasoline for 29 cents per gallon.
Depending on the car or truck, it can be very easy to keep them going, especially if you do the work yourself. Of course, here in the USA a domestic, especially the Chevy and Ford brands are the easiest. Dodge nearly so, and the others take a bit more work or work-arounds. For me, I tend to like the oddballs like the 70’s and 80’s rear drive Dodge Colts (well, all the Mitsubishi imported badgengineered models, but prefer the rear drives) and learned a few tricks for keeping them alive (forklift parts and knowing what tricks to use the findable parts in place of the hen’s teeth) or the Mustang II and a lesser extent the Pinto (now both rare as not as nostalgic and they got used up as racecars on dirt, I know I killed a few that way).
Now it is getting easier to keep some things going with new tech, either printing parts or upgrading either the original engine with modern injection, or dropping in a modern replacement. New CAD and CAM makes adapters easier, and cheaper. I also tend to end up with oddball models even when not trying. I had a 90 Accord, and yeah, 90-93 and a ton were made, but I had the 2-door with a 5 speed. Not as many lurking out there. I have a 98 Nissan Frontier, 4×4, and that too seems to be a gap model in the aftermarket, though they also based the X-Terra off it so some things can be dug out of there, but it was the start of US Made models, and they chose poorly for some parts, particularly the dash, that was made by the same company making them for GM and iirc some Dodge cars, and they are noted for going bad, and the dealers do not have replacements, having just managed to have enough stock of spares to last the required time, and not much longer. There is a cottage industry of people fixing them (I used a guy in Winnipeg who had a mail service in North Dakota for ease of shipping to him. Bet the WuFlu nonsense has hurt him, some.) and the Vette/Caddy dashes the same place made as poorly. The company is out of business it was so bad.
Body parts can be a challenge, unless one likes the stuff you can now build a car from scratch in replacement pattern parts. Try finding a fender for a 70 Dodge Colt/Plymouth Cricket or 73-76/77 Colt. 70 Camaro? you got your choice of places for those. Ford F series or Chev/GMC P/U? dime a dozen it seems.
Now, I live in Michigan (though more and more I regret returning after living in Texas) so really for me as long as it is registered and insured, there is not much I have to do legality-wise. Want a ’69 carbureted 427 big block rear drive in a 2019 Impala body? Have at it, Limits are your fabrication abilities or pocketbook.
I’m gonna keep my so far well kept 98 Nissan Frontier (4×4 2.4l 5 speed) going for as long as I can drive the thing. I do wish it got better than 18 mpg and there is likely things I could do for that, but have not looked more than longingly at what could be done.
A well written article and right on the money. If you want an appliance, go out and buy a toaster….
Bravo, exactly what I am doing since years. My “new” daily driver is nearly 27 years old, my “Oldtimer” 55. And I am convinced to live very sustainable. And with with the 40 hp of my “new” daily driver I have more fun than with any new car I get as company fleet car or rental car I use occasionally.