[fipar]

Well, they do (present tense) last longer in the sense that they’re still around and working, which of course doesn’t mean newer cars are worse. It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7.

I think newer cars seem to be more reliable but older cars probably lasted longer than you think, it’s just that your view is skewed due to the market you’re used to (reading your link, while a million miles is a lot, though not unheard of for a taxi, the mention of 17 years as if that’s and old car is something I find surprising.

It’s common where I live to see cars from the 60s or 70s still being driven. And I don’t mean maintained classics (though those exist too), I mean just old rusty cars that still work.

All this to say that while you’re most likely right about newer cars being more reliable (and they’re certainly safer, which is more important), that doesn’t mean older cars stopped working after 20 or 30 years, it just seems your view is skewed because you live in a place where a 17yo car is considered old.

[ProcNetDev]

The population of old cars that you see driving around today is very different from the population of old cars that ever existed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[fipar]

I didn’t mean to say all old cars lasted longer but I can see that it came out that way. I just wanted to point out that some are still around, and further, the US is probably not the best market for a study on car lifetime since it seems most people change their cars when they’re still far from being EOL.

[coldtea]

>It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7.

It's more like saying that someone who's 7 && depends on factory-only parts, processors, and software, that wont be available in 20 years, with ever more complex designs being pushed in between, will not make it to 70.

[pixl97]

An AMC Gremlin came out in the 1970s, and you don't see almost any at all because they were complete crap.

Especially the 70s US cars and somewhat later were complete shit and lead to the meteoric rise of Japanese cars in the US. Almost nothing US built those days got close to 100k miles without massive amounts of rebuilding.

[fipar]

The Gremlin is probably too extreme an example (and as someone not from the US, I’m only aware of it because it became the Butt of jokes in US TV and movies), but I still agree with your larger point.

In my country the closest example for those years would be the Alfa Romeo, which led to a popular saying here in the 80s that an Alfa made you happy twice: when you bought it, and when you sold it!