Raccoonman wrote:
I do. I miss being able to pop the hood on my Falcon and see all the way to the ground on either side of the engine. I miss being able to do an oil change or a tuneup in fifteen minutes or less. I miss it's bench seat. I even miss the couple of them that I owned that had "three-on-the-tree". I miss vent windows. I miss having five fuses on the fuseblock. I miss vacuum wipers, too. I miss having a relatively large trunk for such a small car. I miss a car that seldom failed to start, or stalled, or failed to deliver less than 25mpg. I miss the fact that it had no sensors to fail that would send it slowly to the roadside, to await a tow to the dealership for diagnosis and repairs that might destroy a week's pay today.... I miss points and condensers. I miss my Falcon.
I don't miss the 20 MPG (best) we got with our '64 Malibu straight six. or the 12-14 MPG that I got on my '64 Ford Galaxy. I don't miss having to replace exhaust systems every 18 months. I certainly don't miss 1,500 mile oil changes (plus grease jobs) or 12,000 mile point service, or adjusting drum brakes and valves every 12,000 miles. I don't miss stopping at the gas station every week to top off the oil and check the fuel level (yeah, I said that right. I don't miss diagnosing bad points on the side of the road. I don't miss diagnosing burned points, or rotors, or distributor caps on the side of the road. I don't miss having the foam carb float sink to the bottom of the bowl and no parts available for at least 6 weeks. Or the tire's tubes developing a leak at the spokes or worse, from the plastic tags inside the tire carcus. And I certainly don't miss the only 2 fuses that my MG had (one was dedicated to the horn). Many of those cars wiring harness failed catastrophically because some circuits were not fused. I don't miss pumping the gas pedal in the winter in order to try and start the engine. And cranking in zero degree weather, only to have the battery give up before that car started. And I don't miss replacing batteries every 3 years. The 80's vehicles (pre electronics) with 100 vacuum lines running all over the engine compt were absolutely horrible to troubleshoot poor performance. Newer cars since 1996 (OBDII) can actually tell you what circuit is acting up and tell you which cylinder had the misfire.
Sure simpler cars of the 50's and early 60's are somewhat quaint and have "character" (substitute: require an intimate relationship with that particular vehicle in order to get it started and keep it running", but for a daily driver today, cars and their materials are so much more dependable today, inspite of the complexity of the electronics and added safety systems. This is my opinion.
_________________
Chuck.
“Any suspension will work if you don’t let it.” - Colin Chapman
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