I understand now, when my dad said, “I don’t know, they all look alike to me.”
I still consider electric windows to be futuristic show-off fluffery, despite not having actually seen manual winders in a few years.
We have manual winders. (We down graded our car on purpose for cheaper repairs)
I prefer winders for the front. No need for key in accessory position, and fine control.
Back is tricky
Electric windows go really poorly with that other pair of modern features, turney-offey-when-you-stoppey-engine (that’s the technical name) and button-make-engine-go-not-turney-key.
I was in a car recently where I forgot to close the sunroof, and there didn’t seem to be a way to close the sunroof without re-starting the engine.
I used some the other day and it felt so much better.
It’s hilarious to me how many people are shitting their beds over the Slate pickup coming with crank windows.
All my homies hate repairing window regulators
Done it on a '04 Subaru, absolute pain in the ass that needs two people. Meanwhile the cranks on my '95 Mazda continue to function completely fine.
I’ve never once had to repair power windows in the 20 some years I’ve owned cars.
lucky so and so. every fuckin car, from fuckers bouncing off the car while it’s parked.
i’m a car wreck magnet. of the 20ish car “accidents” i’ve been in, i was in the passenger seat eating lunch for like 15 of them (you lose track after like number seven) i’m not the best data point
It would be interesting to see a timeline of when certain features became standard. For example, pushing a button to start a car instead of turning a key. That still seems new to me, even though I’ve driven some cars with that feature that were old enough to be falling apart.
My car is a 2023 and has a turn-key ignition, so pushbutton ignition wasn’t completely standard yet at that point.
Edit: Clarity
Yeah, it’s a gradual process. I’m a bit surprised that in 2023 it wasn’t yet universal. I’m just saying that that feature probably first appeared between 2000 and 2010, so maybe even a quarter century ago, but it still seems new.
my daily driver is a 2015 wrangler with crank windows. 158k. automatic transmission. only “big” fixes were oil cleaned housing and the latest was last month, radiator broke its seal on bottom. simple swap.
I’m reading this while sitting in a rather new electric Renault Zoë where the windows in the back are manual!
Boxy cars looked the best.
Lancia Delta
Citroën AX
Honda CRX
Ford Escort
Postman Pat’s Van
VW Golf gen 1-3
I learned to drive stick in an e30 BMW. I have a real soft spot for boxy 80s cars.
80s cavalier z24?
Third-gen Camaro while we’re at it. And the equivalent Firebird.
Fact: every year of the 90s was exactly 10 years ago and always will be.
I’m not quite sure that’s how it works
I’m telling you, it is!
I love the styling cars had circa 2000. This whole “let’s make cars look like futuristic tanks” thing lately is not it
I blame ford pickup trucks for that. Did you keep getting bigger and the front end keeps getting flatter. Eventually they’re going to be so high up you’ll be able to run over small trees without noticing.
you’ll be able to run over small
treeschildren without noticing.
Back when they cared about aerodynamics.
Wanna feel old? The moon landing was in 1969, that’s 57 years ago from 2026, the halfway year is 1997…
Crap, the time between when the moon landing happened and when I was born (late 80s), is smaller than the gap between 9/11 and today.
And it always will be, by an ever-widening margin.
… I think I gotta lie down
For me anything with 19’ in it is a long time ago. It was the time I was a kid, still growing up, and that’s seems so long ago.
I drive a car from the early 2000’s. When I got it I was stoked to finally have a car made in this century. It turns 20 in 2 years 😬
My truck just turned old enough to drink in the states, I feel like that must be some kind of country music initiation
Ha my truck just turned 40!
Lol so did I, decent vintage at least
Cars used to be made to get you somewhere. Now they cost 4 times as much and are full of government-mandated surveillance equipment and random gadgets that are expensive to fix when they break. And they’re twice as heavy.
The only thing that’s gotten better is safety.
I miss when cars were cars
What government mandated surveillance equipment are you referring to?
From 7 July, all new cars and vans sold in the EU must pack a fresh batch of safety features, including infrared cameras that watch the driver’s face.
Exactly what I was referring to. Along with GPS tracking that alerts you if you’re going over the speed limit. Totally won’t be used for anything else, right?
The government mandates all telecommunications to be intercepted and and monitored. Car manufacturers willingly installed celluar modems in their cars for OTA updates and their own data tracking reasons… therefore, the government has surveillance equipment in your car.
Also the EU mandated driver monitoring so you can’t even drive tired anymore (yay for repression), at least let me drive home from work.
Thats mandated in the US aswell, suppose to be implemented by 2030.
Maybe not govt mandated, but used by the governments. New cars have infotainment with GPS trackers, cameras etc. Toyota and Teslas were the worse from a year or two ago for selling your data to companies, especially insurance companies.
A week ago alstate data came out that they paid millions to many apps for your phone to track you like life360, gasbuddy and so on.
Don’t get me started on TVs. Watch gamers nexus on LG TVs. They store 4gb of data including audio, screenshots - even if it’s not connected to the internet. Doctor’s offices, companies or other places that rely on hipa or trade secrets have these TVs sitting around.
Your wifi routers uses beam forming to track you around your house and can be accurate enough to make out complex shapes like faces.
Anyways, I came here to say I have the same generation a4 avant with the 3.2l, I think b7. Just the right loudness exhaust from factory when you floor it and at right rpms it reverberates like a super car because of the vvt.
Honesty the best era for cars is around 2003-2016 depending on the manufacturer. The older ones from around 2008 or so are especially good.
Now they cost 4 times as much
Pricing on cars with similar features and performance have been going up slower than general inflation, but as you mention they keep increasing the features/performance of the base models.
When I was really getting into cars in the 90’s, it seemed like the base models of economy brands were pretty barebones. But over time what previously was optional became standard: air conditioning, automatic transmission, power locks/windows, floor mats, a decent car stereo, cruise control, etc.
And the things that used to differentiate luxury brands/models just became standard over time: traction control, good acceleration/handling, clear coat over the paint, rust resistance. In the 90’s, it was still possible to buy a vehicle that took more than 10 seconds to accelerate to 60mph (~100km/h).
And of course, a bunch of safety stuff became standard in large part because of regulation: airbags, anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, backup cameras. And fuel efficiency has gotten much better on the engineering side, for any given level of performance and vehicle weight. Emissions have similarly improved by regulation.
So cars have gotten so much better, while basically getting more expensive slightly slower than general inflation. So it’s hard to compare apples to apples between decades.
awhile back i saw a toyota prius hybrid with ‘collector’ plates that are used by classic and antique car owners (and cheapskates that want the cheaper plates in exchange for some use limits).
In 20 more years old cars will look like the first picture, because of planned obsolescence.
It’s strange to live in a time where things change so much on the scale of a decade or two. Most of human existence was much more consistent. Multiple generations could come and go without much changing but the seasons.
The wild thing is to go on Google Street view, which feels like a relatively new feature but it was actually been around for a very long time, use the historical images function and go back and look at how old, and small, the cars seem.
I remember when they publicly released that and people were freaking out there were pictures of their house and backyard online.
Yeah, it’s wild. If you were going about your day around 1400ish, you were practically doing it the same way as your folks did it around 1100ish, or even 800ish.
Essentially, for the majority of human existence we were hunter gatherers. So no massive cultural or technological changes on the scale of decades or years.
I want that 40 year old car so bad
Same, I just recently had someone offer me a Buick Lasabre for cheap. I was very excited until they said it was a 2003 😑
Reliable sure, but man did the '00 models look gross. Go back 10-20 years from that ugly thing to these beauties and it would have been a deal.
Get one while you still can, they haven’t been going down in price for a long time and may in fact already be going up in price. They’re pretty iconic, but not as many on the roads these days.
It’s a mk2 Golf, if you want a cooler one - there’s a Cross Country variant that’s a lifted 4x4, or if you’re super lucky - get a Rallye version, it’s a homologation special
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Keep in mind it is a death trap due to the weak frame
“we ought to be driving flying cars by now” :D
That audi is around 2008-2011 (15-18yrs), but one gen before that, yes 20 years old.
And cars don’t really age that terribly anymore (at least the 1.9 TDI era). My 2002 golf is (if we ignore the reliability and the swimming pools) way better than the newer 1.6 TDIs I’ve sat in, and it will probably outlast them.
The swimming pools…? Did I miss a scandal or something?
Water in my boot door. Great.
It actually leaks trough the adhesive between the glass and metal. Not really enjoyable. It sounds like a swimming pool on every road except the highways. Will have to add some silicone (or putty) to hopefully stop it (since glass reattachments are expensive.
Also: it’s the car of the Dieselgate era. Those are (in my opinion) the strongest and most reliable diesels ever made. Maybe VW was onto something when cheating the emission tests (well probably they could just add better filters, which would make them less money), but that doesn’t make the cars bad.
I have seen Honda motors that will continue kicking well into 400,000 miles
I think car manufacturers are mildly screwed as the old cars are way overbuilt
Wow, I heard of Hondas. In the EU, the VW 1.9 TDIs are known for lasting into the similar teritories. But mine is under 200.000Kms and will probably rot away before reaching high mileage. But if I can, I’ll keep it good as long as I can.
As an owner of a 20 year old car, I approve this message.
