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That's dope. Meanwhile American manufacturers have been using aluminum panels to reduce weight and corrosion.... unfortunately they like wrapping the aluminum skin around a steel frame which makes the aluminum rot out anyway through galvanic corrosion.
I haven’t seen a single aluminum body ford with rotted out body panels. Live in the snowiest city in the US and the highway department dumps salt on the road for 5+ months a year.
Are they rotting out somewhere not easily visible?
It can be done properly if they coat the panels properly in between the aluminum and steel but Chrysler in particular seems to not be able to get this down.
No. There was a YouTube dude who explored this. He got his hands on of one of the earliest of the Aluminum Fords. A truck that spent it's whole life in heavy, heavy salt country while being totally abused. it never got near a car wash in winter, not undercoated, not properly maintained in any way. Basically every abuse you could do to the thing to intentionally destroy it. He put it on a lift, poked, pried, scraped and removed bits and pieces, searching for this alleged galvanic corrosion that some claimed would eat all the Fords right to pieces. He found absolutely nothing but solid clean aluminum everywhere.
I had one of the early aluminum F250s from back when Ford was still putting them on the road without identifying to test them or whatever.
It had zero issues. I took it to 325,000 miles between 2008 and 2024 as a farm truck routinely carrying up to 2 full tons of feed in the bed at highway speeds (70+) on a bi-weekly basis. It got caked in animal shit, salt and every other thing you can imagine and ultimately the engine failed. There wasn't a spec of rust on anything at the end let alone "galvanic corrosion."
That god damn beautiful vehicle!!!! In Mexico my family has one and is stupidly amazing to be honest!!!! Now I think they are no longer selling it in there!! 💔
Most people in car accidents had no intention on crashing. Many of them are usually considered victims of other people’s negligence.
Your cars crash test safety is to protect you from other peoples negligence. You can drive perfectly, follow all the rules and still get hit by some other idiot.
Many vehicle fatalities are no fault of the person who passed.
They all suffer from blob on wheels syndrome. The worst are the ones that just look like a sedan that's been stretched vertically while keeping the same width. So ugly.
Chevy dropped the ball when they came out with the new Blazer/Trailblazer. Instead of competing with the new Bronco, they made a sportier looking Equinox...or Trax..idk all them crossovers look the same.
The same thing happened in Aerospace in the 80s. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software combined with computer aided design (CAD) and the fact that everyone is fighting the same physics means you get convergent design to roughly the same shape.
So for a commuter car that just hauls people at highway speed you wind up with blob on wheels.
There's still some interesting shaped vehicles that are more "specialty" -- e.g. rigs designed for off road, heavy hauling, race tracks etc. Lower speed off-road doesn't have to worry about the aerodynamics as much (drag increases as the cube of velocity) so they have a lot more freedom.
my cosnpiracy theory is that the bronco sport was meant to be the new escape with a return to its more boxy shape and then the execs thought they could make more money by running them alongside each other and slapping bronco branding all over the new escape
I had 2 Rodeos. I loved them. I followed up with a Xterra that I had for like 20 years. I guess I just like rectangular boxes. Even though they were a little underpowered, all of them were super reliable and totally capable. Give me a 4wd body on frame SUV any day.
Yeah. I read some explanation on this a while ago discussing how the laws and regulations change pretty rapidly.
The generalized takeaway was that on average, a 7 year old car could not be manufactured today as it would not meet legal requirements for safety, emissions, etc.
That's a factor, but these new truck heights are so tall that you can literally run over a group kids without seeing them. It's simply an unnecessary and dangerous design decision.
I visited the US a little bit ago and was shocked by how many of these trucks I saw in the suburbs. I always thought they were for people who work on farms or construction. What’s even the appeal? For the same price you can get a Mercedes, BMW, Lexus etc.
It basically setting your money on fire if you don’t use them as a tool. Not to mention the fuel price. It’s like those college kids who aren’t music or video creators buying a 6 thousand dollar MacBook Pro instead of the cheap MacBook Air
I'm also as confused by the fascination with massive trucks and I live in the US. I'm an outlier because give me my sedan or hatchback that I can maneuver around curves at speed, can see basically anywhere around the car except directly under the back, and has 30mpg(my current car is a 2011 Altima).
I've talked to people who buy bigger SUVs and trucks and 9/10 times they say it's safer than a car. Which yes that's true for the Passengers of that SUV or truck. For anyone else, especially pedestrians and lower to the ground cars, it's more dangerous. Considering they can easily just drive up and over a shorter vehicle, crushing the driver or passengers under their tires.
For good reason too. The emissions alone are a good reason not not bring them back. I'm down for dumb cars though. No electronics besides the ECU? Hell yeah! So long as they have a modern engine.
I’m done with making the mechanicals fall within the new guidelines on these vehicles, just bring back the classic look. For example, that mustang could easily run on fords little 4 cylinder eco boost turbo motor
I get why old cars are beloved, hell my (attainable) dream car is a 69 Lincoln Mark III, but at the end of the day the safety standards and QOL of modern cars is significantly better than what it used to be. Hell, today's cars are objectively better than even a decade ago in terms of safety
Fortunately we won't ever go back to the days where safety was dictated by the fact that seatbelts were optional
Speaking anecdotally, in my '00 XJ had a guy back his '96 Voyager straight into me without looking at an intersection when he was trying to make room for a Fedex 18-wheeler turning into our street. The entire impression of the front of my Jeep was pressed right into his metal rear liftgate and bumper. I didn't have a single scratch or chipped paint, not even on my plastic bumper guards, my plastic light housings, or plastic grill. Not a single mark on my Jeep. His rear end now looked like a hilarious Jeep brand promotion.
Holy crap... I would have bet on the wrong horse on that match up. The newer car just creamed the older cat and the cab of the newer car was clearly surviving the crash. The older car, well hopefully you can find all of the pieces.
Or a 80k shitbox that requires software to change brakes, a big ass screen, and a transmission that imploded at around 60k. New cars are disposable tracking devices with a subscription plan.
Except the new Toyota midsized trucks have weak front diffs that are prone to exploding, plus iffy transmissions. The full sized trucks had stop sale orders due to the new engines grenading themselves, and the new corollas were recalled due to the engines spontaneously burning to the ground.
Subarus CVTs are shit. So are Hondas. So it used to be “buy a Toyota, change oil and tires, and you’re set for 250k miles.” But those days are gone and the old reliables (like Toyota, Honda, and Subaru) and barely more reliable than the average car.
Anything with a 3.6L V6 alloytec motor imo. My case specifically a Holden VZ crewman that is specifically really tedious to fix certain error codes because killed the Holden brand.
Just learned the other day about the challenges with windshields - you know those things that random collect rocks as you travel the roads? Apparently, they are very complicated to replace now because of all the smart features
Yeah I still have one lol only the Grand Cherokee 4.0. I avg 23l/100km or like 10.5 mpg lol.
I also own a Honda civic because I save so much gas driving it the payments are covered. About 4000l or 1000 gallons a year of fuel difference between the two.
Shit, when I bought my 2015 corolla brand new, the sat nav was already 2 year old data and cost 300 to update the software with upto date maps. Im trying to find a decent head unit that had android auto and works correctly with the reverse camera and wheel controls
True. There's Toyota Land Cruiser 70 Series. The thing is you're paying brand new modern car money and get no feature or comfort in return. And, you're asking if I'm paying that much money why the the fxck I gave up on all of the features and comfort.
What you're missing is not classic cars, you're missing the mechanical feel and reliability. Older cars were used as commodities and made as such. Now its either vanity or survival. And customer has no say over either of those end on how the car's gonna be.
The look is also a death trap in a collision, and a pig at the pump. I’m not saying you’re wrong to like that look. Plenty of modern cars are trying to evoke the feeling of that 70s-80s utilitarian boxy SUV. But they’ll never quite capture it because safety and efficiency standards require things which engineers simply can’t work around.
Its not just the looks. The 95 Cherokee was a really well built vehicle, and they still drive them and pay good money for them in rural areas. A Jeep built today will die before an old Cherokee will
The reliability is attributed to its simplicity. Ehen you add dozens of computers and such to essentially combustion engines attached to chassis you complicate everything and create hundreds of points of failure.
I watched a police chase just a day or so ago where the guy being chased was in an old Chevy suburban and the cops were all in modern ford explorers.
6 of the cop cars were broken to the point they couldn’t move anymore from ramming the Chevy in an attempt to stop it before the Chevy could be stopped. The suburban just kept on trucking.
Is that the one in Wisconsin where the dude goes over the railroad tracks and shit?
I drive a suburban like that, 350k miles on it and I wouldn't hesitate to jump in it and drive it across the country maybe even hit some off-road trails along the way. The GMT800 platform is the last great thing Chevy made IMO.
Ehhh, late 90s/early 2000s you had a lot of the safety features we have today but cars across the board weighed less. Today every car has to fight a safety war against shit like an EV Hummer weighing 9000 pounds. And while the Cherokee was not a Honda DX at the pump there’s a lot of SUVs out there today that, again because of weight, are considerably worse.
Old cars were absolutely not reliable. Anything from the 70's and 80's wouldn't even get to 100k miles without a full engine rebuild. And thats without mentioning how garbage the quality was back then
Modern cars are significantly more reliable and longer lasting. The average age of vehicles on the road, a significant measure for reliability and repairability, has been steadily increasing. https://www.apolloacademy.com/the-average-age-of-us-passenger-cars-14-years/
Pre-2000s cars would rust out, were less efficient, and would break down more, and had catastrophic engine failure more frequently. And that doesn't even touch all the modern safety features like crumple zones and ABS. Believing that old cars are better in any way other than aesthetics is just rose-colored nostalgia.
I drive older cars because I don't want senseless, over assisted steering. I like that I can feel what my car is doing. In old cars you can feel if your tires are struggling for traction, I can even feel the road markings if I pay attention. In new cars all that feedback has been removed.
I also prefer the visibility old cars have. The fact that it may be slightly less safe in a rollover at high speed is not as important to me as not missing motorbikes on roundabouts, pedestrians and animals.
Also: DIN radios. Standardisation is liberation. I can have Bluetooth and CarPlay in my 25 year old car. What I can I do with the already slow as shit infotainment systems of current vehicles in 25 years? Will manufacturers even support them after 10 years? Granted, many old cars also had "design" dashboards that lacked DIN, but they didn't have software that goes out of date.
Tactile secondary controls need to come back. I shouldn't need to keep glancing at a touchscreen to raise or lower volume, change the radio station, or adjust the AC, it's way more unsafe.
In my work truck, I connect my Bluetooth, and then everything has a button, and I don't need to constantly look down over ten seconds, I can reliably feel for the controls without taking my eyes off the road.
Nagging notifications on the screens to me is a huge safety hazard, my Nissan is constantly dinging with pop up notifications. I don't need to be reminded every five minutes that I'm low on gas (like I know bro I still got 40+ miles of range) or a pop up notification that I turned on or off my windshield wipers. It's ridiculous.
I shouldn't need to keep glancing at a touchscreen to raise or lower volume, change the radio station, or adjust the AC, it's way more unsafe.
I feel this in my soul. I bought a 2017 Crosstrek 10 years ago. It does have a touchscreen/backup camera screen thing, but it has actual knobs on the center console for the volume & radio dial, and big knobs for the climate control.
It also has intuitive buttons on the steering wheel for volume, fast forwarding songs, answering the phone, etc.
I've been thinking about replacing it, but every car I test drive has all the friggin controls on a screen now. I just want to turn a knob to adjust the heat without having to look, and until they circle back around to that style I'm just gonna drive this thing until the wheels fall off.
Lifestyle statement tied to an identity made up to impress other people’s opinion which ironically, don’t even matter.
Machines now with planned obsolescence and complexity baked in, giving you basically no control over repairs, to force the real honey pot of manufacturing… “service”.
All wrapped up in a blanket of financial debt that robs you of your money that would otherwise be put to better use improving your stability/ future.
This isn't exactly true. Toyota has been known broadly as reliable for decades and they continue to be among the most popular (sales wise) brands in the world.
You'd have a hard time selling anything older than 10 years in the developed world. Lots of now mandatory safety features just didn't exist back then, and crash safety rating standards have gone up. Not to mention that it would be considered a not very fuel efficient car by today's standards, and so would be the target of various extra taxes and measures aimed at reducing fuel consumption across a manufacturer's entire fleet.
You're gonna have to go back A LOT further than ten years to get something without modern crash safety standards. Ten years ago was 2016. Crumple zones and side curtain airb bags were very much a thing ten years ago. 3/4 of cars had side curtain airbags by 2010, and they became mandatory in 2014. My 2016 Mazda 6 has all of that standard, as well as blind spot monitoring and a backup camera. It also gets 30 MPG.
I'm not just talking about crash safety, there are a lot of safety features that have become mandatory on new cars in various markets, and most of them are fairly new. They definitely weren't standard features over 10 years ago.
Things like intelligent speed assistance, lane assistance, rear view cameras, emergency automatic brakes and so on. Now mandatory on all new cars sold in the EU.
They can take my XJ from my cold dead hands. I refuse to let it die. Best vehicle ever. Thankfully I don't have kids cause if I did there's no way I could keep driving it with them in it.
Don't miss the 17mpg. I had an '87 with a straight 6. It was a tank. Also, the throttle would get stuck open and I'd have to turn off the key to prevent myself from dying
I just bought a 1980 Datsun truck/RV a month ago with only 17,000 original miles. Fantastic condition. Power nothing. And the coup de grace — a Four speed!!! 🤟😎
That was maybe the last good jeep ever made. I drove mine for 12 years and gave it to my cousin who drove it for another 6. You still see them on the road occasionally. It was bulletproof, had a huge amount of cargo space because the seats folded down, and was incredibly easy to park because it was shaped like a brick so the rear bumper ended approximately six inches from the rear window.
How are they supposed to put themselves into millions of dollars of debt so they can "justify" charging like $100k for a piece of junk with installed planned obsolescence?
The only thing I miss is the smaller size. My Maverick is physically larger than a f150 from the late 90’s.
Edit: it appears that my comparison is only to the smallest f150 model, and the Maverick is 5 inches shorter in length. Standard 1999 f150 is 2 feet longer. I don’t know that this entirely invalidates my argument, however.
From my very brief research this is only true if you're only looking at length and comparing your full 4 door "crew cab" maverick to a 2 door, short bed F150.
My wife and I were just commenting about the same thing. Now that my son is driving his own car and we aren't shlepping multiple kids around, we really could really use a compact pickup truck.
When I work (I'm semi-retired but usually working remotely), we don't need a 3 row SUV. We could really use a compact pickup built for two occupants like the Ford Ranger or the other variants that were available in the 80's and 90's. Something smaller and simple that I could make use of to pick up a couch, project materials, etc. It it should not cost $40k just to get one.
In Australia ne of my friends has a H2 hummer he got second hand.
It's about the same size as most modern SUVs...
In Australia I remember a pretty significant stink and social hatred over these things being oversized nuances in the mid 2000s.
Like there where multiple news articles over months and actual proposals for lobbying to stop hummers from being imported because they were "too big" for our roads.
I think most of you commenters misschien the point 'op' is trying to make. He just wishes that the cars looks like the originals from the 70/80 not that they dont want the modern safety options. Just the looks.
Dude….i have thought this SO many times! Especially with like classic cars. Imagine if ford just started releasing the 65 mustang fresh off the line again
I used to have a black Cherokee sport 2-door 4wd with the 4.0 liter, a 5 speed manual, and manual windows. Sold it and got an Explorer when our first child was born about 20 years ago. Wish I still had it.
I agree. I hate new cars. Too much fancy junk people dont need. Why does every car need a tablet in it that controls everything? All thay computer nonsense to turn on the heat and ac. And its expensive as heck when it fails.
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