I started buying cars 50 years…and they are no where near the quality of cars built today. Not even close. You have to go back 60+ years to find ODs being rolled back. People back then didn’t put the miles on their vehicles like they do today. Not even close. 100k miles was considered high mileage. In fact, ODs didn’t go past 100k miles. You will find a few vehicles that had a great reputation for reliability…very few. 50 years was also the start of the Asian invasion. It was 50 years ago that I was a huge GM fan, and it was during that time that I realized how more reliable Japanese vehicles were compared to GM, Ford. Cryco and American Motors. My brother-in-law is a retired Chryco plant manager. And during the 70’s and 80’s when he was just a GM at a New Process Gear he would attend these seminars sponsored by all the American manufacturers to determine WHY the Japanese vehicles at the time were so superior. The other caveat was the Gas Crisis which spawned the need for more fuel efficient vehicles. Japan had been building fuel efficient vehicles for decades, The Big-4 were playing catchup. They rushed vehicles like the Pinto and Vega into production to compete…and failed miserably. Emissions was also a huge factor. Japanese vehicles had a much easier times meeting the introduced Cafe’ numbers while the Big-4 struggled. Not of fan of many domestic vehicles built then.
My wife’s 07 Lexus (which we sold last year with over 280k miles and still running GREAT) was in every aspect better than my Chevy Vega. The Lexus was bigger, faster, more luxurious, several magnitudes more reliable, much better handling, better gas mileage and polluted far less.
Even back then, laws and procedures were in place to prevent this kind of fraud, and instrument clusters had methods for detecting if the odometer had rolled over. I do not believe that dealers rolling back odometers was nearly as prevalent as you suggest.
Even in the 1980s, and possibly earlier, vehicle titles have had odometer miles (at the time when the title was issued) and required the seller (the customer trading in the vehicle) to complete an odometer disclosure. Unless the person trading in the vehicle was in on the fraud–meaning they were the one who rolled back the odometer, it would have been very difficult for a dishonest dealer to roll back the miles, when the signed odometer disclosure on the title showed a different (higher) amount of miles.
To be honest, when I clicked on this thread, I assumed this would be a discussion of how leaded fuel and inaccurate air/fuel metering led to premature engine wear, or possibly how improvements in lubricants have led to longer engine and transmission life.
As we all know, work trucks typically have cheapo interiors with vinyl seats
Well, we sometimes get the seats reupholstered if it’s reached the point where the driver is sitting on the metal frame, and we also get the headliners redone if it’s drooping to the point it’s obstructing the driver’s vision
But guess what . . . after getting the seats and headliner redone, you’ve still got a 15 - 20 year old beat-up work truck. All the plastic’s fading, cracked or peeling off. The carpeting is worn clean through and everything is generally discolored or dull
And that’s just the interior . . .
you could theoretically manipulate the odometer reading, but the vehicle won’t pass the eye- or smell test
Don’t you know that this thread is supposed to consist solely of imaginary factoids that were generated by someone’s longing for “good old days” that weren’t actually very good?
63 Ford, 69 Buick, 78 Chevy. Dad had these cars and they all went well over 200,000 miles before being sold off. Of course none of them made it that far without a transmission overhaul, engine being opened up to one degree or another, and countless radiators, alternators, heater cores, etc. Two of them had paint jobs as well.
But as to the point of new cars “lasting longer” because 70% of them had odometer rollbacks, I call bs. But that’s already been done several times above.
Back in the '50s (and surely prior to the ‘50s) it was SOP for cars to need a ring & valve job around the time that they hit 50k-60k miles. When I was a kid, this was the case with all of our neighbors’ cars, several years after they bought these cars as new–not used–cars.
And, in the '50s & '60s, on hot days, it was not unusual to see a lot of cars parked on the shoulder with the hood up, and with steam streaming from the radiator.
Somewhere there’s a picture of Uncle Bob filling the radiator by stuffing ice cubes from the cooler one by one because the engine boiled over and we couldn’t put iced tea or beer into the engine.
Note that the income chart is household income not per capita. So when both people in a household started to work instead of just one, you would expect household income to rise substantially.
But then that old principle of unlimited wants but limited mean# took over and found there were far more things to buy. The thing is, it was all by choice.
Incomes have NOT risen. People are posting half truths to support the narrative that things have been better since Reagans big beautiful economy. Its the most amazing economy ever, i was told no one has ever seen an economy so great.
In reality people can’t afford to live.
It is obvious to mean so many here while are smart and good hearted people, have a great disconnect from what going on out here.
Right. But if you look, the slopes are fairly consistent. If a spouse joined the workforce at some point, you’d expect a significant bump- a step change. But what I see is a fairly consistent slope. The bigger point to note, none of them went down so the idea that people had more income previously is not borne out in the charts.
My uncle bought a new car when I was a kid in the early 60s. I think it was a Buick, but can’t remember. Drove home from dealer (total of 2 miles) and oil light came on. Checked oil and it was bone dry. Filled crank (about 6 quarts) and drove back to the dealer and oil light came on as he pulled into the dealership. After 2 days at the dealership they determined the engine was built without all the oil rings. Compression rings were all there. They gave him a new car which he kept for years.
Right. I think we should just be honest about the changes that have taken place and why. I don’t buy the socialist view of the oppressed versus the oppressors, but I do know it is hard for a wage earner to build wealth, especially when paying interest and buying on time. You’ll never go broke spending less than what you make, but you usually won’t build much wealth unless you borrow to buy assets.
In 1956 my dad asked for a ten cent raise. The owner said if he did that, he’d have to pay the Anderson boys an increase too. So he quit and went to the big city and about doubled his wage. That’s capitalism and it works but takes guts. I don’t know that I ever made more money than my dad with my fancy degree but I know he had to work a lot harder than I did.
Some friends in California moved back to Evansville - haven’t heard from them since.
You miss the point: the share of total income of the bottom 90% has decreased over the last 50 years. Because of the Baumol effect - Wikipedia this has made them relatively poorer: wealthy people have driven up the prices of things because they can. Medical care has become more expensive because wealthy people can drive up its prices. More wealthy people can afford extra homes, can pay to rent AirBNBs that compete with housing. More money goes into luxury goods.
Women entered the workforce, which meant households had increased expenses for childcare, and often a second car.
I was on a road trip when a weep hole seal in the water pump broke. It took me a while to figure it out. I still carry a few gallons of water for the next time.
As Steinbeck didn’t write, ‘Socialism didn’t catch on in America because Americans don’t think of themselves as members of an oppressed proletariat but as temporarily-embarrassed millionaires.’
Most of the struggling people I know are that way because they REFUSE to even attempt living within their means
All those Disneyland trips, exotic island getaway cruises, international plane trips, luxury car payments, etc. REALLY add up
And then when the car needs repairs . . . or god forbid scheduled maintenance or tires . . . or a window at the house needs to be replaced, they’re literally up the creek, so to speak
