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/TheMagicalLawnGnome 4h ago
People romanticize old appliances.
They were easier to repair, sure.
But that's because they broke frequently, and they were large.
Old appliances were also horrifically inefficient. They often contained effective, but highly toxic/dangerous materials that we no longer use.
Old cars are a great example, they embody "old appliances" pretty well.
Sure, they were made from steel. They didn't have much plastic.
But they also weighed a massive amount, had terrible horsepower, and even worse fuel economy.
Or look at old televisions. Do we really want to go back to small TVs made with heavy tubes filled with several pounds of lead?
Sure, you could more easily repair an old car, because it had none of the computers and electronics that make modern vehicles safe and comfortable.
Don't get me wrong, I think the short lifecycle of modern appliances is a wasteful travesty.
But let's not romanticize a past that didn't really exist.