From the ArcaMax Publishing, Automotive Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/automotive/s-366125-377801
This 4th of July weekend, light off a bottle rocket to salute the
four-wheeled-friend in your garage - to show your appreciation for all
we've come to take for granted. Things like:
It starts most of the time
Even the humblest Hyundai rarely gives any real trouble. You get in,
turn the key - and it starts. Every time. No need to work the gas
pedal up and down; no "tricks" to get it to catch. It just does.
Praise the Motor Gods - and modern fuel injection/engine management
systems!
It stops
With plenty of room to spare, too. Modern brakes are probably the
single biggest improvement in new car design over the past 20 years.
In 1980, only a handful of very expensive high-performance sports cars
and top-tier luxury cars even had disc brakes at all four corners. ABS
was all-but-unknown. Nowadays, all but the very cheapest cars have at
least four-wheel-disc brakes - and ABS is becoming universal.
Panic-stop skidding is almost a thing of the past - a piece of history
along with vacuum-operated windshield wipers and bias-belted tires.
It doesn't rust
There was a time when quarter panels and wheelwells began to bubble
and look like sickly Swiss Cheese after just a couple of years on the
road - especially if you lived in an area where salt was used in the
winter. But today's cars are so well-protected against rust - by
galvanizing, multiple coats of protective undercoating and
chip-resistant primers - that body rot is becoming as rare a sight as
a wood-paneled Pacer. In fact, the body of your new car will almost
certainly outlast the mechanical stuff - exactly the reverse of the
way things used to be, when floorpans rotted away to create a
Flintstones-style form of transportation long before the engine gave
up the ghost.
It doesn't pollute
Well, not much. Over the past 25-30 years, engineers have reduced the
harmful stuff coming out of your cars tailpipe to literally fractional
levels, relative to what they once were. In fact, less than five
percent of the combustion byproducts of a typical 2008 model year
passenger car are other than harmless water vapor and carbon dioxide.
Looked at another way, a 1970 mode year car put as much lung-choking
garbage as a dozen (or more) '08 model year cars. It's a tremendous
improvement that's gone largely unappreciated - but you should be
thankful for it every time you take a breath.
It lasts longer than the loan
Treated with any decency, almost any new car or truck should go at
least ten years and 120,000-plus miles before showing serious signs of
decrepitude - let alone hitting you up for a rebuilt engine. That is
borderline miraculous to anyone old enough to remember how things were
before about the mid-1980s - when engines began smoking at 70,000
miles (less was not uncommon) and few cars were anything other than
beer can fodder or redneck lawn sculpture after a decade on the road.
It has AC. And power windows. Usually a not-bad stereo, too
These were high-end luxury car features - or at ht every least,
expensive options - as recently as the '80s. Nowadays just about every
car - down to the lowest bottom feeding econo-compact - either comes
with or offers AC, as well as power windows, locks, electric defrost
and a gauge cluster with actual gauges, not just a speedometer set
in the middle of a bunch of next-to-useless idiot lights that came on
only after something important stopped working.
It gets decent gas mileage
Even the worst-offender 4,000-lb. V-8 SUV can approach 20-mpg on the
highway - a phenomenal achievement that can be credited to the
development of overdrive transmissions that reduce engine operating
speeds (and thus fuel consumption) once the vehicle has reached road
speed. Instead of turning 3,000 RPM at 65 mph, the engine is hardly
idling at just over 1,800 RPM at the same road speed. Fuel injection
has helped, too. It's much, much more efficient than old-timey
carburetors - which have been gone for about 20 years now.
No more annual tune-ups
Heck, you may never have to deal with a tune-up at all - unless you
own the car longer than five years. More and more new cars have spark
plugs that last 50,000 miles (or even 100,000 miles) and don't require
more in the way of routine maintenance than the occasional oil/filter
change. "Long-life" coolant has dramatically extended the time between
mandatory "flush n' fills" - formerly an almost annual ritual if you
cared at all about your radiator and hoped to avoid a summer
boil-over. Coil-on-plug ignition systems have eliminated spark plug
wires - while solid state electronics have done away with any need to
make periodic adjustments of the ignition system. No timing, no points
- no hassle. Hooray!
You get your money's worth
Yes, new cars can be pricey - or seem to be. But in fact they are
cheaper to buy today (as a percentage of the typical person's income)
than they've been in years - and historically low interest rates,
amazing cash-back deals and rebate programs only sweeten the pot. But
the most important thing is that almost any new car you buy can
provide 10-15 years or more of faithful service - free of the major
design flaws and premature failure of major components such as the
drivetrain - that were simply part of the equation since the dawn of
the automobile age. Today, in contrast, you can reasonably expect to
drive whatever you buy until the early 2020s, if you want to - more
than long enough to amortize the purchase price and then some. After
the loan's paid off, the rest is pure gravy - basically free
transportation, less gas and routine service. And unless you manage to
beat the thing into an early grave, even at the end of 10-15 years,
there will still be some value left. As a trade-on, down payment - or
a car for your kid to take to school. Whatever.
It's a lot to be thankful for - and well worth lighting off a bottle
rocket or two to celebrate!
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www.ericpetersautos.com or EPeters952@aol.com for
comments.