Cars of Today Are Not What They Were a Few Years Ago

Cars of today just don't seem to have the heart and soul of older cars.

In the words of the song "Things ain't what they used to be".

Sure, modern cars do the business - getting us from a to b, and very effectively, but they just don't have the feeling of the cars of yesteryear.

I suppose in a strive by the manufacturers to maximise profits and the wealth of experience they have gained over the years that they have been producing cars, they are able to piece together a vehicle that will give several years of really reliable service at a reasonable cost and earn a good profit in the process.

Cars produced in the 1980′s and earlier were certainly less reliable but simpler, with limited electrical systems. They were the type of vehicle which could be repaired by anyone with a sound knowledge of the workings of a car. What happened to contact breakers and where were we before electronic ignition systems?

Thousands of back street garages thrived as the guys who worked there understood these cars and knew the remedy to get the car fixed and back on the road quickly with their knowledge, experience and the simplest of tools.

Even a DIY home mechanics could carry out repairs to the majority of these vehicles proficiently if they followed the instructions as laid out in the workshop manual.

But with the advent of the rather complex car of today, any problems and the vehicle has to go for repair to a garage or dealership which is equipped with the right sort of equipment.

There the garage technician (they are not called mechanics nowadays) simply hooks the vehicle up to a laptop for diagnosis using hardware and software designed for that make and model of car.

The computer tells the technician what is wrong and he fixes it - although the diagnosis is not always right so things can get costly as wrong parts are unnecessarily fitted in an attempt to remedy things and some of these parts are far from cheap.

Where has the heart and soul gone from modern cars?

May be in the cost cutting, the car manufacturers left these out?

But, joking aside, I think that the quirkiness found in older cars, their unreliability, their unsureness of the old jalopy getting us home, not getting us to that date on time, having to push it when it would not start, all of this endeared us to our car somehow, almost to the extent of being in love with our car.

Some of us even gave our cars names! Including me.

Is it simply the car of today is too reliable that makes it less endearing?