[RatchetWerks]

As a die hard car enthusiast. This makes perfect sense.

We are going through a culture change in society.

Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)

Combined with the brutal performance of modern EV cars. Muscle cars seem like a waste of time/energy/money/complexity. Logically it makes no sense.

I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.

[PaulHoule]

Don't forgot to lay some of the blame on trucks, SUVs, and the chicken tax. [1] American car manufacturers aren't interested in making anything that can't be classified as a "light truck" because then they'd have to compete on a level playing field with foreign brands. So every kind of "car" has disappeared.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

[twoWhlsGud]

This. If you are completely surrounded by light trucks as you grow up, then you are much less likely to ever think of actual cars (muscle or otherwise) at all. I grew up around 2000 lbs BMW 2002's (and the like) - a kind of vehicle that simply has vanished. So I could imagine lightweight sport sedans as a thing. If all you know are SUV's your concept of vehicle is going to be very different...

[PaulHoule]

Auto journalists keep repeating in the same deadpan voice as the brainwashed soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans exclusively want big vehicles. It's not that there isn't some truth in that but the real truth is that (a) the publications won't get any chance to review vehicles if they don't toe the line [1] and (b) since the 1970s if you went to an American car dealer trying to buy a size S car they would try to sell you an L, looking for a size L they would try to sell you an XXL, etc. I remember going to car dealerships with my dad, there was a brief moment after the 2008 financial crisis that this wasn't the case, but by 2015 the major Japanese brands of Honda and Toyota were doing the same.

[1] One take on the fall of Intel was that they were "high on their own supply" for the last 15 years and journalists were too intimidated to tell them they were wrong with the exception of Charlie Demerjian

[wombatpm]

But the vehicles today are dumb big.

My second car was a 1978 Buick Riviera. 17.5 feet in length, two doors, rear wheel drive, 403cuin 8 cylinder. It weighs in at 3500 lbs, had 15 mph rated bumpers with shocks attached to the frame. Steel roll cage, double steel doors.

The car was a beast. You could fit 7 adults in the car and two dead bodies in the trunk.

My grandmother was t-boned in it. They straightened the door and replaced the glass and it was good as new.

That was a big car!

I wish I could buy a car like that with modern antilock brakes, transmission. Instead it’s all trucks and SUVs because people like my mother feel “safer” and like seeing from up high.

Look at the specs of a modern vehicle. Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.

[kelnos]

That really took me back. In the 80s my mom drove a mid-70s, 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Itt was just under 17 feet long, also two doors, and I believe rear-wheel drive, with a fairly large engine. If memory serves (sigh, it often doesn't), my mom even called it "the beast". I laughed out loud at your "two dead bodies in the trunk" -- yup, checks out.

I'm torn, though, on your idea to have a car like that with modern (safety) features. I hate all the trucks and SUVs out on the road, and I drive a mid-sized sedan. And I agree with you on how easy it is to damage that car. But man those old cars were so heavy. I can't imagine getting decent gas mileage (or good BEV range) on one today.

[xnyan]

Your perception about the safety of 1970s cars is off - you are massively less likely to die or be seriously injured in a car built in 2025 than any car in any car built in the 1970s.

[potato3732842]

70s and 80s cars were built for the little "whoopsie that's a mailbox", "didn't see you merging there" and "oh golly me, this snow sure is slick, and that's a ditch right there" mishaps that are the overwhelmingly dominant form of vehicle accidents. If you didn't actually care to fix things, many accidents that would be thousands of dollars today were $0 back then because required systems remained functional (that was the whole point of those mandated 10mph bumpers).

If your want to survive hitting stopped traffic at 40mph because you were too busy shitposting in traffic, modern car all the way. Depending on the details you may very well walk away without a scratch. It's really marvelous how good they are at keeping people uninjured, or at least alive.

But the overwhelming majority of people's driving experience reflects the former accident type, not the latter, hence why people have the opinions they do. And you can't really blame them. The odds of any given person being in an injurious accident in their life are low, lower still if you avoid a few key behaviors everyone agrees are bad.

[marcos100]

Just search for crash tests of modern vs older cars to see which one is safer.

[user____name]

> Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.

Admitedly I'm not a car guy, but isn't this by design? Crumple zones and all.

[tmerc]

Bumpers from the 80s and early 90s were more substantial and outset from the vehicle. If a 5mph impact did anything to the bumper, it took the hit and the rest of the car was generally fine. The bumper was easy enough to replace because it was external to the vehicle.

Modern cars don't have external bumpers and what you see on the outside of the car is a "bumper cover". The actual bumper is under that and no longer spans the whole front/rear of the car to the sides. Many new front bumpers don't go past the headlights.

So in a 5mph crash in a modern car, the bumper cover (made of plastic and held on by plastic) takes the impact and generally gets destroyed. Replacing it costs several hundred dollars in parts before paint (because they're all painted). There's also more labor involved in replacing it because it's so integrated to the car. Bumper covers now clip into both fenders, core support, and undercladding and removal means working with all of those parts, then lining up body lines after.

I think it's less a comment about serious accidents and more a comment on getting rear ended at a stop light now costing $600+ in repairs even if your airbags didn't pop.

[potato3732842]

The zone's #1 job is to buy enough time for the airbags to inflate during a crash at speed. Occupants moving forward toward the space the airbags will occupy as the vehicle stops and then being hit by an airbag attempting to occupy that space would be bad.

The degree to which crumple zones attenuate forces felt in a crash is fairly minimal in low speed crashes because in order to have enough time for airbags to inflate in a 100+mph crash they are necessarily quite stiff.

[southernplaces7]

I believe you're misunderstanding the security and safety design nature of modern cars vs. older ones from something like the 70's, 80s or earlier.

I've seen a number of crash test videos comparing modern 21st century cars in collisions with solid, unmovable obstacles at high speed, compared to those old cars, and while yes, the old cars had external features that let them more cheaply and functionally deal with minor accidents, they would be totaled by any truly heavy impact, with lethal results for their drivers.

Modern cars on the other hand may be more externally fragile even for minor hits and easily get damaged in ways that lead to thousands in repair costs for all their interconnected, electronically sensitive alarms and sensors, but for enduring high-velocity impacts, they're often fucking tanks when it comes to fundamentally protecting their occupants. Under that fragile exterior of any decent modern car is a remarkable security construct that isn't easily visible, right up until it shows its mettle after your car slams into a wall, and keeps you alive, at some speed that would have annihilated some supposedly tough muscle car from the 70s.

Go search for these on YouTube, they viscerally showcase the difference in the best (and most entertaining) possible way, by trying to catastrophically destroy both kinds of car.

There's a lot of electronic tracking, spyware, junkware, over-complication pushing that I absolutely despise about the modern auto manufacturing industry (partly because of legal mandates and partly out of general shittiness from the makers themselves) but for safety, they're impressive.

EDIT: Here's just one example. The occupants of the Malibu would have survived this crash with minor injuries. Anyone driving the 59 Bel Air would have been turned into a mangled disaster of broken bones and crushed body parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoShPiK6878

[Bud]

A lot of this is true, but also, look at the safety records of those modern vehicles. They protect the driver a LOT better. A totaled car is just a car. Getting paralyzed or killed is a lot harder to fix.

[seanmcdirmid]

Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan make plenty of trucks in the USA, they get around the chicken tax directly. The move to trucks and SUVs seems to be more about consumer sentiment that I can't really understand (I'm a big fan of sedans), it isn't just some hack around the tax system.

[eptcyka]

There’s a floor on how cheap a vehicle can be made to conform to the current safety and fuel economy requirements, the margin is greater for more expensive cars. Manufacturers are incentivising bigger cars.

[eldaisfish]

it is profit for auto makers, not consumer sentiment. larger vehicles have larger price tags and larger profit margins.

Remember that the US auto companies spent billions of dollars in marketing and lying to people that they "need" vehicles the size of tanks.

[harimau777]

Isn't some of it an arms race? I partially have a large vehicle because it's unsafe to be in a small vehicle if I get in a crash with a truck or EV.

[PaulHoule]

They make people think that.

The fact is that modern cars have astonishingly effective safety features that are likely to get you alive out of most crashes regardless of the size of your vehicle. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes data that shows that larger vehicles are safer but it is not like you die in the smaller car most of the time, but rather you are more likely to break your ankle or something.

If your vehicle goes under the tractor pulled by a semi (any size) or if it flips over the guardrail because it's too big to be held by the guardrail you do die.

[arethuza]

If larger vehicles were safer then you'd expect the deaths per unit distance driven for the US to be good - when it's actually quite bad?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[crooked-v]

See also: the excellent safety ratings of the Miata, even though it's the smallest car you can get short of Smart or imported kei trucks.

[hnthroay22312]

but larger vehicles also flip easier, so i'm not sure until we have some scientific paper about this.

[lotsofpulp]

No one forced people to buy the larger vehicles when they came on the market. People choose to buy vehicles that let them sit higher and take up more space, when smaller alternatives are readily available.

[murderfs]

People want vehicles the size of tanks. Auto companies are spending billions of dollars to get people to buy their respective tank-sized vehicles, not to turn people onto the segment in general.

[PaulHoule]

I've heard people say "people want vehicles the size of tanks" in discussions like this but I've never heard "I want a vehicle the size of a tank" although that person exists.

It seems like a different world but before the pandemic if you wanted to buy a compact car you would go to the dealer and find out they don't have any new ones, you'll have to settle for used, they say factory washed out in a flood. Well they have 100 SUVs made in the same factory lined up that nobody wants to buy that are $7000 off.

[murderfs]

From a survey of Canadians in 2022 [1]: "We find that SUV drivers view their vehicles as functionally superior to smaller cars in terms of safety, space for lifestyle, handling, and fun. Symbolically, SUVs are seen as a “status symbol” that can communicate a number of images, such as being “successful”. SUV drivers are more likely to see these vehicles as common and “approved” in their social networks, and tend to downplay any negative societal impacts such as increased GHG emissions. Across respondents intending to buy an SUV, willingness-to-downsize to a smaller vehicle was highest under financial incentives (for buying or using a car) or disincentives (for buying or using an SUV)."

I personally don't understand how you could consider an SUV better for handling or fun, but denying people's views doesn't make them not hold them.

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146...

[dfee]

I want a vehicle the size of a tank.

Or at least, a vehicle the size of a Hummer H1. But, would be willing to try out a Marauder, because they look like they’re a blast.

I had tiny sports cars growing from 16-30 years old. They were fun in a different way.

1. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/modified/behold-500bhp-295k...

2. https://www.motor1.com/news/27190/marauder-armored-vehicle-f...

[tstrimple]

I have a family of five and we’ve managed with a single vehicle for basically the last 20 years. So I’ve been in minivan mode a long time now. Recently I went car shopping with my son and it’s crazy to me how much more limited sight lines are in the smaller sedans. You have to be much more active leaning and looking around. I don’t know that I need a tank, but I absolutely love the minivan for driver visibility.

[Spivak]

The data speaks for itself. Honda offers the civic and accord and the CRV outsells them both. SUVs are much higher utility than a sedan for pretty much the same price and same gas mileage.

[vostok]

As someone who lives in a city, I'm not sure what I'd do with a car that is smaller than a tank. If it's a small car then it's probably for local trips and super inconvenient to park / re-park / etc. I want a big car to comfortably fit my family, our outdoor toys, and maybe even tow something.

Even if I lived outside a city, what do I gain by driving a smaller car? Going from 35 to 55 mpg? Parking is plentiful and equally convenient for big cars these days.

[kelnos]

Do they actually want that, or have people been influenced by incessant marketing? Car manufacturers have strong tax reasons to prefer building SUVs over sedans, and their marketing reflects that.

[mc32]

People with families have been fooling around with larger vehicles for some time: station wagons -> minivans -> SUVs -> CUVs. It's not new.

[riffraff]

Most of the time people drive SUVs alone.

I go for walks in the morning and there's a road bottleneck and it's hilarious and sad to see the cars queueing up on both sides, huge ones, with a single person in them, every morning.

I do own a station wagon, and it's shorter than most SUVs, and I use it for long trips, but let's be realistic, that's not what most drives are.

[user____name]

I think people want tanks because all their neighbours are driving tanks.

[firecall]

> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.

I view it as much like having an appreciation of Steam Trains and older aircraft!

Still interesting and the best are machines worthy of our ongoing attention.

FWIW I own an old Porsche 911 and an alarmingly fast EV.

I love them both.

When I get back in to the old 911, I think to myself, how the bloody hell was this even legal! It feels dangerous and exciting all at the same time. It's an event every time I turn the key and it starts making noises and the gauges spring into life and lights and switches start glowing. Then you turn the key from a cold start and listen to the sound, and you get to know exactly the state of tune. You dont even need to drive it very fast or very far and it makes you feel alive in a way my EV never does!

Now when I get in and drive my EV, it works in an astonishingly safe and effective way every time. When you stamp on the accelerator it will immediately rocket forwards in a way that makes the occupants of the car feel sick LOL

The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.

But as I say, it's like being a Steam Train enthusiast. They are what they are, from a time when they did what they did.

[m463]

> The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.

I think this might be like the yamaha v-max motorcycle. It wasn't as fast as other motorcycles, but the way the throttle opened up at a certain rpm range made the boost seem exciting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost

[anonymousiam]

Ferraris are the same way. They've got an incredible top end that no EV will ever match.

[RatchetWerks]

I’ve come to similar conclusions in vehicle choices.

Current daily is a fast EV. The next project car I build will be some flavor of an outlaw SWB 911

There is something about it being analog that feels great. I have the same feeling for older Ducatis

[Balgair]

As a former gear head there is also the perception issue.

Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.

The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least.

Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore.

Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)

[georgeecollins]

Another big problem is that performance is so much better than it was in the golden age of muscle cars. Lots of BMWs and Civics today would blow off the fastest car imaginable in '68-70. Of course the latest muscle cars also improved, with engines that are like 400- 1000 hp (really just that Charger, but a teen in my neighborhood has one).

That's just really a dangerous amount of power for a daily driver. A lot of electric drivers don't realize how much the potential power is taken down in daily driving to keep it safe. But Camaro LT's have a sport mode where the backend can get loose with just a squirt of acceleration.

Cars like that are insane. It's just not safe to drive cars like that on city street anywhere near their potential.

[heresie-dabord]

> grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.

Yes, the economics have changed. And so has scalability.

For today's young adults, vehicle cost and total cost of ownership have made ownership of private vehicles another "shining artifact of the past." [0]

But you know what else? Populated cities have dense traffic. Racing with full acceleration to reach the next intersection's red light is obviously futile.

People are more worried about having a roof and four walls.

[0] to quote L. Cohen

[potato3732842]

>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)

It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever.

It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.

[fallous]

A muscle car is as much a visceral experience as it is a means of transportation, and never under-sell the fun of driving a slow car fast. Modern cars are sensory deprivation chambers that turn the joy of driving into the tedium of transporting oneself from one place to another.

We're decades past the time when a 1960s car was remotely competitive on any measurable aspect of performance but, just as rock climbing is not a valid competitor for taking a train/ski lift/whatever to the top of a mountain, there will always be those that revel in the joy of doing something that calls to our more primitive selves.

Muscle cars are the essence of being young... they're unreasonable, loud, reckless, and beautiful.

[DamnInteresting]

As a former gearhead, I must say that an EV with get-up-and-go has been worth the tradeoff for me. Sure, I miss the roar of the V8, and the manual shifting. But the instant torque of an EV is so satisfying, and the low center of gravity is fun to toss around. And I don't miss all of the gas station stops, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, fouled sensors, overheating, spark plug changes, clutch replacement, brake pad changes, dripping fluids, fumes, shouted conversations with friends over the engine noise, et cetera.

[bitwize]

I remember, years ago, reading on Slashdot about "ampheads" who seemed to have just as much fun playing with performance EVs as my dad did tuning hot rods in 1960s California. I think EVs can be enormously cool, with all the advantages you describe, but most of the commercially available ones are, again, "smartphones on wheels", built for convenience and tethered to the manufacturer. I would love to see more of an enthusiast EV scene build up, maybe involving kit cars with a fully analog drivetrain you can repair with off-the-shelf parts.

[smileysteve]

There are still suspension tuning parts for major ev brands like Tesla.

I was at a track day last year in my bmw 3 series and there was a Tesla 3 in my run group in front of me, "lowered" slightly with Eibach springs.

[tmerc]

How many sessions did it last without access to a supercharger?

[hervature]

> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.

I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.

[RatchetWerks]

You are perfectly correct.

I’m morphing love of modifying cars away from performance numbers but into a way to build mechanical art and enjoy emotional moments with other humans.

I’ve realized that was the whole point all along. EV or IC it doesn’t matter. Just the statements above

[ismokedoinks]

The kids yearn for JDMs

[platevoltage]

Do they? It seems like its the 30/40 somethings that yearned for the JDMs back when we were young, who are the ones still yearning for the JDMs.

[georgeecollins]

I understand so completely! I am not old enough for muscle cars, but I liked cars that were big as I was growing up. Like I had an old 944 (loved that) an early WRX, a Mark Vii GTI-- all manuals. I realized my favorite cars were manuals with rear wheel drive.

During the pandemic I got a Camaro convertible with a manual. I love that car but it is hard to defend on functional grounds. A Tesla plaid will blow it off on the line. There are a lot of cars that are ten times more functional that are as good or better on the track.

I have kids who don't care about cars, took their time getting their driver license. As someone who grew up California I can't understand that. But cars allowed me to do things they can do without cars. And they live in an objectively safer and more stressful world, so I can see why they don't want to add driving to it.

Here's what I like about what I drive. It's fun, silly and orange. People look at it and know I like my car but they don't think I am rich dude with a fancy Porsche or Mercedes. All kinds of very pedestrian cars are faster, but I live in Los Angeles and I get to enjoy the weather.

[RajT88]

I'm not a gearhead, but a car admirer. Bought my first fun car recently (a 2001 MR2 Spyder - probably my last fun car).

I think we're a long way off self-driving cars in earnest, but we're in the shorter term leaving behind the idea of cars as something where their performance in some way correlates with social status. As hard as you try, you can't deny that element is there for gearheads and tuners - it's writ large across the Fast film franchise.

[pstuart]

I think there will always be a desire for the "vroom vroom" factor, as well as the ability to work on it without an EE degree.

I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense.

I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.

[stavros]

I agree, like there's always been a desire for a well-groomed horse.

[rconti]

Even outside of EVs, cars have gotten to the point where you're barely driving them anymore, anyway, you're more of a "human in the loop". You can't really see out of them anymore (other than the windshield, of course), so most people have stopped trying and just rely on the "systems".

* Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to

* Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe

* Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent

* AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc.

Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone.

I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.

[mingus88]

And good riddance?

Car culture has killed livable cities and I am not going to miss loud and obnoxious cruisers playing games on public roads

[potato3732842]

Stuffy middle class on up white people killed cities. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed care culture. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed... just about everything.

All those tropes, jokes, memes and other culture crapping on various slices of that broader demographic don't come from nowhere.

[platevoltage]

Seriously. I've had more fun on my bicycle than I ever did during my car phase.

[heresie-dabord]

Agreed. And e-bikes are not just practical now, they are actually a thrill when climbing hills.

[rconti]

Doesn't have to be just a phase, I love both!

[platevoltage]

I spent most of my working life doing body work, and then I was a mechanic. Kind of ruined the magic for me.

[georgeecollins]

Bike rack on my Camaro! But I am fine with car culture passing, it makes sense.

[rconti]

I'm more mixed. I love that I live in a very walkable area, and our next move (but not for ~10 years) is hopefully to live carless in a European city.

And yet, I mourn the loss of what we once had, and I'm trying to scoop up fun cars while I still can.

[dingaling]

I don't think that the new era of 'EV appliance culture' will have any positive impact on urban planning compared to 'car culture'.

There are more vehicles on the roads than ever before, and each of those distracted travellers demands a direct route from home to destination whether they're driving or being driven by a robo-taxi.

[random31181]

I assure you there would be a lot less life in the city if you lived and died in the same village you were born in, like most people through history.

[mingus88]

Ok. I’m talking about the concerted effort to kill trains and public transit by the auto/oil industry.

LA was beautiful in the 20s. Could have been a world class metropolis instead of a sprawling hellscape of seven lane interstates where it takes 1.5hr to travel 15 miles, choked by pollution.

Go watch Roger Rabbit again. Pay attention to the villain instead of the foxy redhead.

[gmueckl]

If you want a "raw" driving experience, you need to go on a race track in a "proper" race car. I use the quotes because you could come up with very diffferent definitions for them depending on your particular perspective. Amateur car races are a thing, btw.

I'm glad that all these assistants exist for road vehicles. I think of myself as a fairly disciplined driver (welly who am I kidding, really?), but these systems have saved my bacon more than once over the years.

[m463]

> you're barely driving them anymore

It's worse with tesla - the Plaid has removed most driver controls.

If you're a car guy and buy a 1000hp+ vehicle, I think you would want a drive select or turn signal stalk.

You can't flash your lights. wipers are not under your control. if you're sticking out into traffic, you don't know if the car will guess correctly that you want to back up... or pull out. nonsense.

[djmips]

Then you can be an old man gently oiling the steam engine at the museum you volunteer for.

[lm28469]

> Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)

No shit...

> The average monthly car loan payment in the U.S. is $745 for new vehicles and $521 for used ones

> In the first quarter of 2025, the overall average auto loan interest rate was 6.73% for new cars and 11.87% for used cars.

[bitwize]

My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance.

He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue.

I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium.

A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps.

Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).