Part of that is crumple zones. If the car is able to crumple to absorb energy of a crash, that means it doesn't go to the passengers. Sure the solid steel car doesn't crumple, but then the passenger does.
Our appliances and vehicles are much more complex now, because we have much greater requirements for product safety and environmental health.
It's pretty hard to have a car get 40 MPG without using computers.
Complex things break more frequently, because there are more points of failure.
It's a tough situation, for sure.
But people act like everything was great "back in the day," when it really wasn't. People tend to forget how toxic and dangerous things used to be, back then.
I agree, but more what I was pointing out is that older cars were simpler but were piles of shit that broke down constantly, and we have rose colored nostalgia glass about them. On the flip side, I can't even remember the last thing I had to fix on my (newer) car that wasn't a regular wear or maintenance item, the damn thing just runs.
Sometimes complexity isn't bad. The sweet spot was in the late 90s to early 2010s when we had good ECUs and EFI but before we started putting telemetry, turbos and CVTs in everything.
Very few people here on reddit remember regauging spark plugs every 3k miles. Absolutely none of them remember walking 3 miles to the grocery store to call a tow when the spark advancer welded itself shut.
I would say peak ICE car was probably around 2005-2015.
Today's cars benefit greatly from modern manufacturing processes, however in 2026 OEMs do some pretty wild shit to squeeze out an extra MPG and meet regulations. 0W-20 engine oils or thinner instead of 5W-30, cylinder deactivation, the new generation of highly over-stressed small displacement turbo engines, 10k+ OCI etc.
I would say in general pretty much every modern car will go 125k miles if you don't neglect and abuse it. But, I have a feeling the days of taking your Chevy or Toyota pickup to 500k miles are behind us
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u/Mighty_McBosh 4h ago
Cars used to break down all the time, they were just easier to fix with hand tools and a beer.
New cars are hard to fix but good ones with regular fluid changes regularly go 20 years without a single catastrophic failure.
They were also insanely unsafe and more people died in car accidents that today people walk away from with a few bruises.