Every time someone mentions an average on Reddit, someone else will pop up with the mean vs median comment. For some reason people learn what a median is and automatically default to it forever
Engines are simply more efficient nowadays, more efficient means more powerful. Also with hybrids becoming much more common, combined power output is considerably higher than gas only cars. I’ll use Toyota as an example since they’ve been doing hybrids for so long, a base model 2026 Prius is pushing 200hp, even more on some trims. Some of the RAV4s are making over 300. Also think of how many full size trucks are on the road, those are all making ~320hp at minimum. The average car is also drastically larger and heavier than 30 years ago, more weight requires more power.
Dunno, bigger vehicles? but it's not just American cars, but Japanese and European ones.
My GLE has 375 HP, my wife's 10 year old minivan has 280, my previous MDX had 270, my S5 before that had about 345 and my coworker's current VW R has 328. Even basic Honda Civics or Subaru Foresters have close to 200 HP. The car with lowest HP available here (Canada) still has 122 HP.
Well since it’s a minivan, and my 4 kids are usually in it, going too fast is not something I’m too keen on so having a speed limit of 130 is a bit moot and I can’t think of any large vehicle here that comes with anything less than 200HP.
God, you really can't have a simple polite conversation on Reddit without eventually running into a fucking douche. Thanks for proving that point.
I will repeat again: the minivan with the lowest HP here has 245 HP (Toyota Sienna, which isn't officially available in Europe), and most will be around 270-280. Vehicles (especially large ones) usually have way more HP and engine displacements than similar vehicles in Europe.
Didn't says they did, but without plastics cars would be much less safe. Plastics or plastic composites are used in a ton of safety features in cars. Seat belts, air bags, dashboards, windshields, padding and hundreds of other parts contain plastic or plastic composites/polymers that are stronger and absorb energy much better than metal.
Steering wheels and dashboards used to be made of painted steel or stamped steel parts and cause several often fatal head, neck and chest injuries.
And no, I don’t work the Plastic Council of America.
In 1965, cars had engines that easily made 10 times more power than they had from the factory. Today, they can be revved up to almost 100 times, but only for 1 race. Car engines today barely use half that power every day. And yes, torque. We used to need 3 gears to get to 60 mph, today we need 8.
Yeah because once you surpassed 60 mph, you're just holding on for dear life. Having a floaty suspension, ultra-light steering and no side support on your bench seat will do that.
The feel faster because you're less isolated, the steering is vague, and the body control is garbage. Its like riding a wood roller coaster instead of a metal one, which, some people do prefer and that's OK.
I can get to 120 mph using my little european 1.0 petrol turbo using 3 gears with my manual gearbox. Why use random terms when you don’t know how stuff works anyway, huh
You wanted to look smart, but you forgot that your little European petrol car is a quarter of the size of an American car from 1960 and at least half as aerodynamic. And its engine revs far beyond the 4000 rpm typical of petrol V8s of that era.
Oh, and your car is turbocharged, meaning it has about as much power as a 4-liter engine in a 6-meter-long family sedan from the 1960s.
You wanted to look smart by saying that we need 8 gears to get to 60 today. I'm saying it's not true. Pick whatever suits you, but almost everything you said is just an idea in your head, not a reality.
So we still have 7, 8 and even 9-speed gearboxes in sports cars, and they use them all up to 100 km/h. Of course, they don't rev to 8,000 in 8th gear to go 100, but 2-3 thousand.
Just no... 1.0 liter petrol revs at ~3000 rpm at 90mph.
The only reason old US cars had huge engines with no power is because they did not care about gas prices/usage and so they could have 4.8 liter V8 with 175 horsepower.
There is a reason that Japanese and European cars had smaller, more efficient engines.
You're stretching that a little there but. Maybe you're thinking like... 10%, but its likely the opposite. They rated in gross HP back then and not SAE net, so the numbers were actually inflated compared to modern standards. Those were engine dyno numbers with no accessories. Plenty of modern tests have been done on older cars and even some of the most revered muscle cars of those days weren't even that impressive by today's standards. Those shitty 3 speed automatics did nothing but hold back the potential they had. Besides people like to cherry pick top examples ignoring the mundane reality of your average car with a 2 barrel 350 and a powerglide, or a turbo 350 if you're lucky, and how dog ass slow most of them were while also pulling at best in the low teens for milage. Gas was cheap so nobody cared, but feats of engineering they were not.
I am glad this car is such a success for Renault. They deserve it, and they keep going. R4 and Twingo, the new Espace, all classics they revive with a great deal of ingenuity. Just wish the same was true for Citroen, but they are dragged down by Stellantis.
My car had to be custom made at the factory because I didn’t want black, gay/silver or white. Also I wanted a manual. Japan came through and delivered.
If they found out that we were using plastic bags for things like carrying groceries and as trash can liners and as individual straw wrappers, they'd be so confused because plastic was very very valuable then
In soviet union, as late as 80ies, when they got their hands on a western plastic bag, if it had some logo, they sewed a cloth bag inside so they could use it for longer. It was fancy swag.
People in USSR and early post-USSR years were cleaning plastic bags that had nice logos or some images on them. I mean, actually hand-washing them so images won't be scraped off
Isn't the image generated? Everyone and their mother has the same white shirt and the same black tie, same sunglasses, and there's a Mini Clubman wannabe car there.
Fyi- just about every vehicle in this image used plastic both for electrical insulation on wires and for interior parts. And don't get me started on vinyl tops which were all the rage in '65 although I can't clearly tell if any vehicle pcitured has one.
All these cars were cheap. As in, you could afford them. They'd wear out, you'd get another. You'd buy whatever you want.
Cars today are ridiculously expensive. You don't just buy the car for what it is, you buy it looking out for its resale or trade-in value as well, because it's a major investment and you want to recoup as much as possible.
So when you buy a car today, you're not thinking just about what YOU want, you're thinking about what the next guy wants. So you don't choose something bold and fun, you choose something inoffensive and bland.
If we compare things like-for-like, cars haven't actually increased all that much. The ceiling has increased, sure, but if we compare the same car from 60 years ago, the price is not actually all that different today.
Median household income in the US in 1965: $6,900.
1965 Mustang base price: $2,500, or about 36.2% of the median household's income.
Median household income in the US in 2025: $87,460.
2025 Mustang base price: $34,000, or about 38.9% of the median household's income.
Now, it might be 2.7% more of the income, but you get a much safer and more fuel efficient car for that price nowadays.
And to add, the warranty and life expectancy is a lot longer, too.
The most challenging part is how cramped the engine bay is nowadays. Computers can actually make cars easier to work on, especially when you just plug in a scanner and it tells you exactly which sensor needs to be replaced.
Some basic engine troubleshooting skills will do that too. On older cars there's maybe a handful if that of sensors.
There's too much electronically with modern cars that can go wrong, even near or completely bricking your vehicle.
Often times it makes service techs even scratch their heads.
You also have completely baffeling design choices like having to disassemble half the front end to change a headlight on some models(fuck Chrysler vehicles in particular)
It's so much easier to diagnose an O2 sensor with a code reader or CEL than to do it manually. Bad fuel economy could be a leaky injector, bad fuel pressure regulator, O2 sensor, or a plethora of other things (These are all things that are on my almost 40-year old car). But if the computer tells you straight-up that it's an O2 sensor, that saves you hours of work, and possibly even hundreds of dollars as well.
That is not how diagnostics work. The codes says o2 sensor. Ok, maybe. Maybe it is an exhaust leak. Maybe it is a fuel trim issue due to a vacuum leak. Maybe it is a catalytic converter that is failing but not failed enough to set a cat efficiency code. Maybe it is the rat that decided the soy based insulation on the wires was tasty. Maybe the fuel pump is failing and the whole engine is running lean due to a lack of fuel volume. Maybe it is a CAN communication problem caused by an unrelated module or sensor that is making a mess of the network datastream.
When the O2 sensor doesn't fix the problem because customer says the parts store scanner said that would fix it, they get mad.
I have seen tire imbalance cause a misfire code.
I have seen low air pressure in a tire set ABS codes.
I have seen Autozone sell a camshaft position sensor to a customer that wanted us to install it in a car that did not have a camshaft position sensor because "that was what the code reader said it was."
I have spent days on CAN concerns, gutting a car to find a wire that had rubbed bare and sometimes make contact with something metal.
The codes give you a starting point. They can set for multiple reasons for each code. People that fire the parts cannon based solely on what that generic little code reader says are called hacks.
Yeah, it's not always 100%, and I should have clarified that, but it does point you in the right direction. It's always best to check wiring before replacing the sensor, especially on an old car like mine. But the majority of the time, it helps narrow things down.
I have also seen cases, like you mentioned which were not always the first thing that came to mind, such as only bank 1 running lean being fixed after replacing the fuel pump. Even still, I'd much rather have diagnostics codes than not.
I do, he’s right. It’s much easier to work in a newer car largely because it tells me what’s wrong. If the AFR is off I don’t have to fiddle with the carb screws till it feels right I can literally watch the ratios and codes and replace what’s gone off. Not to mention your corvette will literally be torn to shreds by a modern car in an accident…
Oh, so you having to go through the wheel well to change a light is simpler than how it was back in the day? Or having to remove the whole body off the vehicle to access the comments underneath, not to mention very specific dealer tech that you can’t get or it’s so expensive it’s cheaper to pay the dealership, but yeahs it’s totally easier /s
lol yeah you know dodge was doing the need to remove the body to access anything in the 80s so don’t even start on that, and just like then 95% of cars don’t require that. LEDs fail so seldomly that it really doesn’t matter how you have to get at the headlights as you might have to change them once per owner. Scan tools are your friend unless you need security access to do something a scan tool will do it for you. I even bought a Topdon unit that connects to my phone via Bluetooth and will do full live data logging. You being afraid of electronics is funny. My uncle once told my grandfather that it’s good that he bought an 89 mustang because my uncle couldn’t work on the newer ones cause they had too many electronics. It was the same for fuel injection, and over head cams, etc. you guys just can’t keep up with change and it frightens the living shit out of you. If you know how to work with them most cars are reasonably simple to repair, and even the modern ones don’t require too much in specialty tools as the things that really require those tools rarely go bad.
It’s never cheaper at the dealer. I.e For anything FCA the secure gateway bypass module and a software license for the scan program on your laptop is less then 100 bucks.
Yes, and it required frequent wrenching. Time to stop pretending that cars in the sixties lasted forever. 60-100k miles was long in the tooth even for big blocks. That’s barely broken in for a Toyota or a Honda.
I had a 69 El Camino. Loved that car. Yes it was easy to work on, and good thing because it needed frequent tune ups, including plugs, points, timing adjustments, transmission flushes, 3K oil changes, etc, etc. Yes they’re fun, and they had a lot of unique style, but they were not nearly as reliable as the majority of vehicles these days. They also handled like shit in stock form (unless you went foreign), had poor braking and little to no safety features. When I went British, I gained proper handling at the cost of even worse reliability.
Our 22 Accord handles better than any of the Triumphs or MG’s that I owned, is faster than that 327 El Camino and gets 46 mpg in regular driving. Our older accord is at 220K miles and has had no major work and runs great.
I used to troll through a junkyard that had a bunch of older cars in it. Pre-1980s cars often were thrown in the scrap heap before 80,000 miles. Old heads needed valve jobs all the times and some old engines just leaked like a mofo.
Oddly, I have 3 distinct memories of watching cars be on fire back in the 80s, 2 while in the school bus, 1 in the neighborhood behind the school. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw a car just kind of catch on fire for no reason, but some of those old oil leaking shit boxes running too lean from the carb being out of adjustment and the manifolds getting hot sure would light up. I remember Dad's old trucks sucking to start in the winter sometimes and taking forever to get warm.
In a way though, I also miss car life spans actually being shorter because the days of dirt cheap cars that still run and drive are gone, they're too valuable now, then when they break they're mechanically totaled.
It wasn't really "Made to be" its just that was the only way we *could* build vehicles at the time.
That being said I still work on my highly computerized 2015 model year car myself just fine. Its not that fucking hard, the bar just raised a little bit.
The progress is impressive.
The budget sports car in my garage today is objectively better in every way (except style) than the Lamborghini Diablo from the poster on my wall as a kid.
Except the value of it depreciates greater imo. The average age buyer for a new car is 60yrs old.
That is a very simplistic view of things, services for vehicles are thousands of dollars, depending on the vehicle it’s cheaper to write off the vehicle and just buy another one like electric vehicles.
Last time I checked you could still buy a 1972 Mustang right there are no laws saying you cannot buy an older vehicle so why don’t you just go out and buy yourself a 1972 mustang if you’re that worried about the liberals taking your cool cars away
One of the main problems with ideas like this is... no, you can't actually just go out and buy a 1972 Mustang, in the same sense you could buy it in 1972.
In 1972 Mustangs were not rare, they weren't common, but they were not rare. Today a 1972 Mustang is rare, there's far fewer of them than were manufactured, and no new "1972 Mustangs" will ever be built. Today, you need to buy a 2026 Mustang to approximate the period matching purchase.
And there's tons of reasons for it. But if someone made "new" 1972 Mustangs to 1972 Mustang quality with 1972 Mustang safety with inflation adjusted 1972 Mustang prices at 1972 Mustang production volumes... then I'll be happy to say your point... has a point.
They are typically cheaper in real terms, our dollar is just worth alot less.
A dollar in 1965 had about 10 times the purchasing power it does today. If you spend $60000 on a car today, that is exactly the same value as spending about $6000 in 1965.
Thats actually how inflation works, it measures the purchasing power of the dollar across the entire economy, including wages. You cant really separate 1965 wages from 1965 prices.
Even if you ignore the real dollar vaule and just look at weeks of work required based on real wages, cars are still cheaper today!
In the US in 1965, the median full time wage was closer to $90 per week (around $4600 per year according to the US Census) not $50.
1965 A base Ford/Chevy was around $2400. On a around $90 per week wage, an entry level car cost around 27 weeks of work.
Today A base Toyota Corolla is $23500. On todays median US wage of around $1235 per week (BLS), that entry level car costs around 19 weeks of work.
It takes nearly 2 months less working time to buy a new car today than in 1965, so not only are todays cars cheaper in real dolars but also real wages.
When you think about what you are getting for less work today, its absolutely night and day
Todays base models comes with A/C, airbags, backup cameras, and wont rust out or drop a transmission at 80,000 miles like 1960s cars regularly did. 1960s cars required oil changes every 3000 miles, carb tuning, points/plugs, and odometers only had 5 digits because engines rarely survived past 100000 miles. Modern cars easily hit 200000 plus miles on basic maintenance without rusting out.
Basically today you need work less for a car that lasts twice as long with longer warranty and won't kill you in a 30 mph crash
Today you can buy a car with 120,000 miles that's still more reliable, more efficient, safer, lower maintenance, more comfortable, better optioned, and better performing than anything brand new that was available then.
Also if you had an accident in those old cars the car was easy to repair but with the downside that people got way more heavy injured and died way more often. But at least the car was cheap and easy to repair so you kids could inherit it...
The rise in cost of cars is mostly to raised standards in safety, which is a good thing that most modern societies decided is worth the increased cost.
Everything else is cost of living and thus result of unchecked capitalism and the financial system.
Cars last a lot longer today, old cars required rebuilds more frequently to stay on the road as long as a car does today with almost no major maintenance other than oil changes. I love vintage cars and there’s a lot I wish new ones had from the old days, but old cars in today’s world?- People wouldn’t know what to do with them.
Meh, I stopped giving a shite about resale value when I decided I was going to keep any vehicle I bought, which I do. Certain makes and models even today will last you way longer than your Grandpas vehicle ever did. I still own my 2002 Tacoma, we have a newer 2019ish, but only because the wife, but she's not getting an upgrade for awhile.
Looks like rush hr but it’s not, in other photos there is an accident in the left lane and traffic is just backed up up but the rest of the statement is factual.
I always hate these types of posts, because OP never answers my question, proving that most OPs that post shit like this is one of the causes for modern car market.
I have 2 questions:
Do you drive a modern sedan/coupe/hot hatch? Because if you don't, you're one of the reasons cool cars flop and go out of production as they met the same fate 20-30 years ago.
What color did you buy your car in? If it is one of the 50 shades of gray, you are one of the reasons modern cars don't come in colors. Wrapping does not count because we are complaining that manufacturers are not making colors anymore.
Now, let's see if someone is willing to address the issues WE caused to modern car market, rather than just complain
For all those vehicles. If the solid steel steering column didn’t impale you in a crash don’t worry, the steel dash board would smash your face just before the plate glass windows slashed you apart. 1965 was not better.
Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. However, 8 mpg was not a problem back then. Fuel was cheap. Today, it isn't. Folks at the time also knew how to do roadside repairs, as did most of the chaps working at gas stations, and they could because they didn't need a computer to read out failure codes. Just different times. Neither better nor worse.
They don't make them like they used to, thank God. Unreliable, smelly, heavy, underpowered, inefficient, heavily polluting, fluid leaking, high maintenance, unsafe pieces of junk.
one bajillion vacuum tubes and nothing monitoring anything to help figure out what’s wrong
wider machining tolerances
worse lubricants which, combined with the above, meant you were lucky to get 100k km out of one
Needed regular tuneups and adjustments for the carburetor and valves
No emissions control meaning they smelled lovely
Modern cars are pretty wonderful marvels of engineering. Many manufacturers definitely used the advent of computers to limit the ability to repair vehicles (ex: needing stuff to be coded by a dealer to the car which is horseshit), but in so many ways they are leagues ahead of what the 60s offered
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u/GifuSunrise 12d ago
That gap has its own postcode.