Ah, yes. I remember the Good Old Days. Cars were much simpler then, and you could work on them yourself.

[rant]

Which was a damned good thing, because they needed a lot of work. Remember tuneups every 3,000 miles -- new points, plugs, condenser, and every other tuneup a new set of plug wires? Remember carburetors with leaking needle valves and sinking floats? And automatic chokes (chokes!) that were so problematic that your auto parts store had a whole shelf full of products to "repair" sticky choke pulloffs? Remember when 12 month, 12,000 miles was the industry standard warranty and lots of people traded in their car every year because they needed that warranty coverage? Remember when most people got rid of their car after 40,000 miles because by that time it was well and truly worn out?

Now look at us. Here we are stuck with pieces of junk that will easily run 50,000 miles without ever having a wrench touch them. Replace the timing belt at 85,000 miles, spark plugs at 100,000. 250,000 miles is not uncommon. If we step on the brakes on an icy road, the car slows down and stops in a straight line. We walk away unscathed from accidents that would have certainly killed us in the 1960's. We go twice as far, three times as far on a gallon of gasoline as we used to go, in a car with better acceleration, better braking, better top speed, and hugely better cornering and handling.

And, you know what? These cars are less expensive today than comparable cars of the Good Old Days. Not in terms of the number of dollars or pounds or deutschmarks, but in terms of how many hours you have to work to buy a new car. It's about the same or less today as it was back then.

Of course it isn't all gravy. My little Honda Fit has given me trouble. Let's see... 25,000 miles, had to change the oil twice, and a few weeks ago the Check Engine light came on, had to take it to the Honda dealer where they found a broken wire (probably VSS sensor) that they spliced, and... uh... that's it, the entire service history of my car after a year and a half. Oh, wait, I had to refill the windshield washer bottle.

Do I want to go back to the Good Old Days when cars were simple and reliable? WHEN PIGS FLY, that's when!

[/rant]

Sorry, julf. You hit one of my hot buttons with that one.

tanstaafl.