Good comments dgosa. There may still be a few IC engines on the road 60 years down the road, but the cost of oil based fuel will be pretty expensive by then. Electricity will be such a cheaper power source that most drivers of commuter cars and the like will flock to electricity. IC may continue to be used on certain vehicles, like trucks, etc, which require a lot of power. And IC might be still used in the form of hydrogen as an option for commuter cars, that’s a possibility, but since the hydrogren will probably come from electrical dissassociation of water, it will be just another form of electrical power. And the hydrogen may electrical power fuel cells rather than used as IC. Depends on what innovations works best. Some kind of combustion engine will be needed for airplanes, so most of the petro based fuel will be used for powering airplanes I imagine 60 years hence is my guess. It may become very expensive to fly from LA to NY, so expensive that only a very few people ever do it then. We’ll have to take an electric train I guess if we want to go long distances.
Still, if you read magazine issues from years past in their attempts to predict the future, they make a lot of big mistakes. Where’s the flying cars for example? It’s difficult to predict what new technologies will become available 60 years from now. I think better batteries will be on the list though, based on what is being done in R&D labs currently with nano-technology.
The sci-fi and comic strip authors seem to have been the best predictors. Dick Tracy’s video telephone the size of a watch was totally outrageous in 1960 but today more people have them than don’t. And Jules Verne was so insightful as to predict Cape Kennedy(Canaveral) and the moon launch.
I’m fully aware that CO is not only odorless but also tasteless and not visible, just like A/C refrigerant. The OP was asking about the smell and while I may not have phrased it correctly, the point is that the eye watering smell in the cabin was caused by CO which was enhanced for want of a better word by hydrocarbons from the combustion process.
In a nutshell, the actual smell is what tells you there is an exhaust leak and CO is entering the cabin.
Generally the ones with no exhaust fume leaks and external oil leaks only (pushrod tubes being the worst offender) would not water the eyes much if at all.
I’ve owned half a dozen air cools and every one of them leaked oil; only 2 of them add the eye watering CO problem and the accompanying smell.
I don’t know about 60 years . . . but I’ve now owned an '89 Accord which I bought new in August 1989. I has almost 550,000 miles on it and it refuses to die. Original engine . . . original tranny . . . original clutch. Parts changed and maintenance done, body rust fixed as time goes by, but it is getting “quirky”, starting to have a funky smell in the damp weather, and I’m kinda getting tired of it. I do have other vehicles to drive, but this one just runs so well. One quirk is a clutch pedal which stays on the floor every so often when it’s cold. Easily fixed by tapping the clutch arm with a stick. My parking brake works halfheartedly . . so I carry a wooden block for parking on really big hills. But it starts and runs GREAT! Gets 30 mpg almost all the time and only uses/burns/drips a quarter to a half of a quart of oil every oil change . . . 3000 miles. After 23 years I’m finding myself looking for another daily driver, although no payments and minimal problems is really nice. Rocketman
The problem is PARTS…A 60yo vehicle is going to need parts. Even a Camry or Accord which are extremely popular…you’re going to have a hard time finding replacement parts. In 40 years I’ll bet you’ll still be able to find parts easier for a 68 Mustang then a 1995 Accord. Not too many companies are making aftermarket parts for 50+ year old NON CLASSIC vehicles.
Mike, you have a point. The most available really old parts over the years (at a reasonable price) tend to be pickup truck parts. Those vehicles change little and the grave yards are full of them. Parts for “classic” cars are avaiable from such suppliers as J C Whitney, but come at a very steep price.
My brother is returning from 3 years in England, and he still has his stick shift 1987 Honda Accord. We will do an evaluation whether it is worth putting it back in daily service or just sell it “as is”. My brother is not sentimental or poor. Since the timimg belt has not been changed for 10 years (the car has been parked for over 7 years) and a number of other things need to be changed, we guess it will take at least $1400 to restore it to “daily driver” condition. He may elect to kiss the car goodbye.
The OP and many of the posters fail to do a simple cash flow analyis, which will tell you at what stage it no longer pays to keep a car as a daily driver. Tom and Ray mainly stressed the safety, environmental, and modernity aspects. The accounting point is where the Cumulative Average Annual ownership cost starts crossing the Incremental Annual cost; i.e. last year’s cost exceeds the average annual cost to date. There is, of course some flexibility here since annual cost can fluctuate. But 2 or 3 such bad years in a row will decide the car’s fate. We call it sending good money after bad.
The hardware salesman I referred to kept his car for about 600,000 miles or about 9 years. That’s prety good for a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. But North Dakota is pretty dry, and rust was not much of a problem.
An interesting exercise for business school students would be to calculate the best trade time. My guess it would be about 20-25 years for a popular car driven 15,000-20,000 miles per year when major components start to fail. We are not including any tax or depreciation factors here. We lived overseas where 70s Volvos were routinely rebuilt with cheap labor and old Mercedes models got a second life. Amazing what $1 per hour skilled labor will get you, along with Chinese reverse engineered parts.
On Spike TV on Saturday mornings…they have a couple of car shows. And many times they’ll work on an 60’s muscle car. They pretty much have been able to find a brand new after market part for everything on these vehicles. Body parts…mechanical parts…doesn’t matter. There are also a slew of upgraded/modern parts for these vehicles. While the Camry and Accords do have some upgrade/after market parts…and replacement parts that fail…I don’t see them 40 years from now. They are GREAT reliable vehicles…but I wouldn’t consider them a classic. And I don’t see people collecting them.
The clutch in my Escort has been changed twice since new. The first one at about 50K miles which was probably due to my niece who wasn’t familiar with driving a straight shift driving the car a few times when my brother owned it. The last clutch lasted about 260K miles and the current clutch has about 210K miles on it. The reason many people don’t get many years/miles out of their car is because all they do is drive them, they never bother opening the hood and checking the oil/other fluid levels and don’t keep up with maintenance. When we moved from NC-KY in 2010 I drove the Escort on the 500 mile journey. I wasn’t worried about it breaking down on the highway and never had bit of trouble out it.
FordMan: Interesting comments. Clutches lasting 200K+ seems reasonable. If you have to replace a clutch twice, once at 200K, and once at 400K, to get to 600K, I think you are ahead of the game. I’ve got 175K on a clutch and notice no signs of degradation yet. The only thing I’ve had to do with my clutch is change the clutch master cylinder at about 40K. It must have been defective, since I haven’t had to change out the replacement since.
The # of miles you get from a clutch probably is affected by many things, like what % of the miles are on long trips vs. short trips and how much of your driving terrain is flat vs. hills. Driving down a flat road at 60 mph all day wouldn’t wear the clutch much, while driving up and down the hills of San Francisco in stop and go traffic would put a lot of wear on the clutch.
One thing, I got this habit of double-clutching. Even if I wanted to not double-clutch, I couldn’t. It’s ingrained. I learned to double-clutch when I had to drive some big heavy-duty trucks years ago in high school. It was difficult to near-impossible to downshift those huge beasts unless you doubled clutched. Now I just drive a regular ol’ econo-box, but I still maintain the double-clutching habit. I downshift more than other drivers because I routinely hyper-mile in city driving. I expect double-clutching might extend the life of my clutch a little. If I can get 250K on my current clutch, I’ll be happy.
You are right about the importance of routine maintenance, but I admit I don’t do as much as the owner’s manual recommends. For example the manual recommends the manual transmission fluid be flushed out and replaced every 60K, but I’ve never done that even once in 175K . I just inspect it once a year when I’m under the car for some reason, and if necessary top it off is all. And the manual recommends valve lash be measured and adjusted with new shims as necessary every 60K. I’ve never done that either. Until such time as I hear loud grinding noises coming from the valves, I say leave well enough alone! My routine maintenance is pretty much limited to changing the oil and filter every 10K, and changing the spark plugs and set the ignition timing and flush the cooling system every 50K.
My Escort has never had the valves adjusted either. When doing a valve adjustment on the Escort you are supposed to re-torque the head. The head bolts on it are torque to yield type bolts meaning anytime they are loosened/re-torqued they are supposed to be replaced because they are stretched. There are other things that I don’t do directly by the schedule too, but I do keep a close eye on fluid levels and when there’s a problem I don’t just keep driving it, I get busy and make the repair before it turns into something larger. Many of the Escorts of this era had problems with blowing head gaskets, that’s another reason I don’t bother loosening and re-torquing the head. I don’t want to create a problem with the head gasket. The transmission on my Escort is recommended to use automatic transmission fluid, but I replaced it many years ago with regular gear oil hoping it would decrease wear. It makes the shifting a little bit stiffer in the winter, but I’ve never had any problems with it’s use. As far as other fluid changes I do them pretty regularly, coolant about every 3-4 years, brake fluid when replacing brake shoes/pads, oil changes have probably averaged about 5K miles over the car’s lifetime using conventional oil. I wouldn’t do this if the the engine was an interference type, but since my engine is a non interference engine I change the water pump and timing belt about every 100K miles instead of the recommended 60K.
I will bet 60 years from now, if anyone is still driving antique internal combustion cars, it will be on an enclosed track or in a parade and not for daily use. Some enterprising companies will have the ability to generate most parts instantaneously from a computer model. A robotic will make it as the customer waits, in less then 30 minutes. For a price, entire motors and transmissions will be available. Parts will not be an issue. But, like cigarette smoking, I feel only the few and very wealthy will have license to drive them in public as pollution will be the big concern…
Cars could be relegated to “transportation modules” making them as boring as that sounds. We will not be driving cars in 60 years, they will be transporting us without our input…anywhere. Driving will be a thing of the past. Heck, they can park themselves now. Home Wii will provide everyone else with that IC experience that their great grand parents had without having to worry about parts.
I had a VW Rabbit one time, and I checked the valve clearance exactly on schedule, for years. It never changed! It never changed enough to require a new shim in any of the valves in 12 years of ownership, and 180K. I think the valve clearance inspection intervals are more frequent than necessary, at least the w/normal driving conditions most cars are subjected too.
My Toyota engine is non-interference too. The recommended change for the timing belt is 60K, but I waited and changed mine at 120K. You know what? It would have lasted another 120K! I changed it too soon! It showed no significant signs of wear. I think I heard that the 60K timing belt interval is considered optional in some newer cars now. When it comes time for me to buy a new car, I’d buy it from a manufacturer that came out with either no timing belt change requirements, or a timing belt routing such that it is as easy to change the timing belt as the alternator belt – excepting the add’l requirement to match the timing marks on the camshaft and the crankshaft sprockets of course. This is no big deal since matching-up the timing marks is no more difficult than opening one of those combination locks school kids use for their gym lockers. I think if the car designers got their act together and came up with an easy to change timing belt, it would prove a winner and attract car buyers. There’s really no need for this routine timing belt change worry and expense people go through in my opinion.
I’ve found 100K mile timing belt interval to work pretty good with my '88 Escorts. Using that change interval I’ve had one break prematurely and one strip the teeth off, because the bearing in the water pump seized. Other timing belts I’ve removed are usually starting to show signs of cracking where the teeth are made onto the belt so I figure they’re due to be changed. The newer model Escort’s timing belt change interval is recommended at 100K miles, so I didn’t see why the older models should be any different. The timing belt is really easy to change on my '88 Escorts, but is a little bit more trouble with more parts to remove on my newer Escorts. I can change the timing belt/water pump on my '88’s in less than half a day without getting into a hurry if nothing goes wrong, but the '94, 97 and '02 all take over 1/2 a day. If I were just changing the timing belt and not the water pump on my '88’s, I think if I set my mind to it and pushed I could change the belt in about an hour, but I’m too old to get into that much of a hurry anymore!! Much less stressful to take my time!!
Anyway, what do you think? Is 60 year/600K possibile for today’s cars? Besides the VW Beetle, what other car would you even consider to keep that long? Cars worth keeping would have to be classics in some sense or the other. They’d have to be among the most popular cars ever built. My nominations would be the Ford Model A and T, the Toyota Corolla, and the Ford Bronco (pre-1976). Any others?
I drove the same car for 33 years. I bought my first brand new car, a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon with the 4-4-2 package in October of 1978. I got the car at a good price since the 4-4-2 was just a trim package. The engine in the car is a 260 cubic inch V-8 and the transmission is a GM TMS 200 automatic transmission. I sold the car this past November with 240,000 miles on the odometer.
The car ran well when I sold it. The engine didn’t use oil and the transmission shifted well. I did have a transmission rebuild at 120,000 miles when it would no longer go into reverse. However, rust was an issue. My neighbor’s son bought the car and it is his only transportation. The Oldsmobile moved down to second car status and then moved on down to my son to take to college. In my son’s second year of college, he went on an internship program that was 400 miles away. The car was 15 years old at the time, so I took the car back and put him in a 1988 Ford Taurus over his protesting that he and the 1978 Oldsmobile “understood each other” and he would be fine. The same day he left for his internship, I was driving the Oldsmobile and the ignition lock cylinder stuck immobilizing the car.
I did think about restoring the car, but I would have had at least $12,000 in a car, which restored, would only be worth about $10,000. Had the car been a true muscle car like the original 4-4-2 it would have been worth the restoration. I am satisfied that a person who needs around-town transportation is getting some use out of the car.
I did do some upgrades. The car had no rear window defroster, so I bought a kit and installed it. The car came with just an AM radio. I replaced the radio with an AM/FM with a cassette and added rear seat speakers. I replaced the headliner twice and had an upholstery shop repair the driver’s seat because a spring was coming through. There is a limit, though, on what is economically feasible to do.
Cars have improved since 1978. Rack and pinion steering is an improvement over the steering design of the Oldsmobile. Fuel injection is big improvement over the carburetor, although the carbuetor on the Oldsmobile had never been off the manifold in the years I owned the car. The brakes were disk in front and drum brakes in back. Four wheel disk brakes are much better. The old Oldsmobile didn’t have antilock brakes.
If I only did local non-interstate driving at speeds of 55 mph and under and didn’t have to depend on a car, the 1978 Oldsmobile would have been o.k. However, I wouldn’t take it out of town, particularly if interstate driving is involved.
The first car I owned was a 1947 Pontiac for which I paid $75 back in 1962. I did drive it to the university where I attended graduate school 350 miles away. However, the interstate system was just being developed and the trip didn’t involve interstate driving. The engine used a quart of oil about every 250 miles. The cluster gear in the transmission was worn, so it sounded terrible when I started off in first gear. I would shift to second gear as quickly as possible. The engine had a cracked block that I “repaired” with K & W seal (it held). The body and interior of the car were in excellent condition–no rust whatsoever. I thought about finding another engine, but this Pontiac had the inline 6 and most Pontiacs of the period had the inline 8. I did put seatbelts in the car, but the car was a pre WW II design. It was cheaper for me to ultimately replace the car with a 1955 Pontiac. Even in 1962, some parts were getting hard to find. The tires were 6.50 x 16 and weren’t readily available. The 6 volt electrical system was out of date. By 1962 cars had alternators instead of generators. If I had the 1947 Pontiac today as my only car, I wouldn’t be going very far. Sixty year old cars are great as long as someone else owns them.
Mystic … Hey, that Honda Accord in the photo has some pretty good styling! I’m not able to view the vdo right now, but I’ll watch it later. It has a million miles on it! Great! That’s amazing! What model year is it? Do you know? The newer ones don’t have as good as styling, the newer ones, they seem like they look like something from the 1980’s to me, but that one in the photo looks very modern, more like the newer Mercedes styling.
I have to look at it as a retrospective to the old cars, as newer cars are a failure waiting to happen. -60 years takes us back to 62. Well a 62 I think I could still find parts for and fix, but an 08 5 years from now possible but expensive, In the future has fail written all over it.