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When did they suck the life out of modern cars ?

I had a company car for years and mostly drive it on the motorways.

Recently I took my boys over Woodhead - a nice road that I usually enjoy. But I used the Audi.

On paper, the Audi is better in every respect than my minis - faster, quieter, smoother, reliable, safer etc.

No fun at all. A wonderful A to B car. But the journey isnt an event. Things seem to be getting worse with electro-mechanical steering, etc on modern cars.

Is this some sort of hidden plan to stop us using cars by removing the driving pleasure.

I'm now struggling to think of anything post 90's (excluding the massively expensive) that I'd really choose to drive for fun.

Is it just me. Has age finally caught up with me. Were things really so much better "back in the day" ?

You are probably never again going to get any modern 'mainstream' production car to give you quite such direct steering and 'seat of the pants' mechanical feedback of a very basic but fundamentally right 'old' car design like the classic Mini.........modern safety regs and 'comfort' requirements have seen to that but it is possible to get near.......I'm an older 'child of the 60's' and a 2002 R53 'New' MINI Cooper S has much of that 'fun' factor for me, I'm sure the original supercharged R53 will become a future classic.

There are also I'm sure other modern 'drivers cars' out there and really buyers new and used have probably never had more choice of good cars and low prices......but maybe we forget all those other average dull to drive and boring cars of the 60's and 70's and only remember with nostalgia the outstanding ones that were full of character like our first Mini?

I also drive a 2002 Mercedes C-Class which sounds rather like your Audi, a great car for efficient A to B motorway trips and long distance driving holidays in Europe.

It's because it's an audi. I can assure you driving my Legacy over woodhead would be lots of fun.

I think it's also because you're not that involved with the modern road car that you don't 'feel it', you're a passenger even a MINI when it comes to actually doing anything with it cos you can't bloody touch most of it (though MINIS are good fun to drive). Modern efficiency, saftey and reliability don't go hand in hand with fun.
And by the way try and use the Snake Pass next time, that really is an entertaining road ! And no trucks !

The modern people have made the cars to what they are now.
Because they like to play with their mobile phone's;need quit car.
They need to play with mp3's ;need al sort of input's and audio.
They need to have powersteering,becuase they don't want to feel their actually driving.
They need aircon,preheating because they are sissys.
They like to save the planet so buy car's witch have support from the covernement for driving a gas drinking engine?
They don't like to think while driving;the car has to have alle kind off warning build in.
Nice feedback you get then from a car.

Modern cars ARE better in every way than the old crocks we love so much, they start in the morning run when you want them to, stop when you want them to & are generally just what we want out of day to day transport.

People like us have the luxury of still being able to drive cars where every journey was an adventure. Its the comparison that we really enjoy, not the actual practicality of day to day use of our classic vehicles.

If we all had to use our "enthusiast" car every day to get to work in, I suspect that a lot of us (not all) would very rapidly fall out of love with them.

Reliabilty is another point with modern cars.

We also have a Subaru Legacy - gearbox rebuild at 35,000 miles. £1200.
Our SMAX - gearbox rebuild at 80,000. £1500
(I blame my wife !!!)

With every new car we get the service interval seems a bit longer - but the cost of each one massively increased.

They may be more reliable but the cost of fixing them is getting ever higher with fewer and fewer garages being able to take care of them.

I'm not convinced that the life-time cost of my modern vehicles is reducing or that they seem to be suffereing from fewer major failures. I dont remember my old cars being quite so expensive to replace major parts.

Although as has been pointed out modern cars do start without you having to spend half an hour under the bonnet on a cold/wet morning and they dont rust.

Audi A4 avant 1.9 oil burner

6 weeks to totally destroy a set of michelin pilots on a 7 mile a day journey over the moors - its not the cars capability that is in question but how you drive the bugger

Try an Audi RS2 - the porsche developed estate, there fun to drive and pretty raw as well

pdaykin wrote:When did they suck the life out of modern cars ?

When they started getting bigger and heavier.

Boring I know, but modern brakes are great if you need them. saves you having to rely on the (very effective) modern safety cell.

I like old cars for fun blasts, but moderns for the day to day. I don't really always want excitement between home and work, or home and Tesco! I want it to start in the winter, warm up quickly and all the other things which are great while they work, but pretty much write off the value if they fail

It's probably because in the past cars were a luxury, now they are pretty much disposable to the average buyer, so people don't engage with them. We engage with old cars nowadays not really because they are better, but rather that they are different. As a typical (non mini) example, I bet any Morris Minor owners now are far more enthusiastic about them than most owners ever were in period. but both these groups would be far more interested in their cars than the average owner of, say, a 2 year old Micra.

Most people care so little for their cars these days that they never even wash them from year to year. why would they expect it to reward them other than to go from A-B safely, efficiently and comfortably?

Do many people not even know cars CAN be fun? Even a Lotus Elise feels a bit dull if you step out of a '50s eleven and into the elise, and at a far lower speed. Some progress?

My pal does however always run classics as his only cars - currently a '70 1275GT, previously a Hilman Minx, A35, Mk1 Golf GTI or his Lotus Europa, but even he admits that if he traveled more miles he would switch. Being a classic car mechanic helps, it appears.

pdaykin wrote:Reliabilty is another point with modern cars.

We also have a Subaru Legacy - gearbox rebuild at 35,000 miles. £1200.
Our SMAX - gearbox rebuild at 80,000. £1500
(I blame my wife !!!)

With every new car we get the service interval seems a bit longer - but the cost of each one massively increased.

They may be more reliable but the cost of fixing them is getting ever higher with fewer and fewer garages being able to take care of them.

I'm not convinced that the life-time cost of my modern vehicles is reducing or that they seem to be suffereing from fewer major failures. I dont remember my old cars being quite so expensive to replace major parts.

Although as has been pointed out modern cars do start without you having to spend half an hour under the bonnet on a cold/wet morning and they dont rust.

I agree, it gets worse, the newer the car is.

Had a friend with a 2009 VW Turan, it was in the garage, SOO many times, becourse a control lamp was flashing,
each time they fixed it, another one started to flash
Eventually he sold it.

Another friend drives a Nissan Primstar http://www.google.com/imgres?q=nissan+p ... =122&ty=55

The car is a 2005 or 6 model, in the last 14 months he spend more than 12000 pounds in repairs and this is VERY normal with this car
I also know a guy who has it in the Vauxhall(Opel) version, he also spend a fortune, one day the car just died on the motorway
it turned out to be the whole wiring loom, it had gone soo hard & brittle in the plastic, so the insulation cracked
This is not Opel,s fault alone, that has to do with this terrible EU sheit they have banned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate in all plastics,
and since that is what makes it stay soft, things go wrong.
Wonder how the replica wiring looms, everyone is fitting to the Mini,s nowadays, will look in 10 years time?????????

You don't have to be a robot with modern(ish) motors. I've run oil-burners for work for the last 10 years, the last being a BMW 330d (i can hear them spitting) but it's served well for 5 yrs but now has 309K on the milometer. Will get it MOT'd for another year this weekend and will start shopping for one of these,the e46 can be backup. Need to get my mojo back !! :-

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/3404149.htm

Know them well and test drove one again recently,made my hairs stand on end !!. 320bhp/RWD/short wheelbase and no driving aids ... re-learn how to drive fast skillfully And £10-12K for a half decent one.

most 'modern' car ive ever owned was my 1984 VW scirocco storm, 1.8 GTI engine, leather, electric windows, even a heate that worked!

Didnt last a year before i got my 1300.... gotta love a classic!

Like mark says, every journey is an adventure, and i wouldnt have it any other way! My commute to work gets me there with a smile on my face! (possibly the moor roads i go on) but they are made even better by the 1300...

This is a Modern car you can have fun in - BIG fun




320 BHP (slightly tuned)
370 NM torque
2 or 4 wd

7000 RPM red line

MIVEC engine

will climb any mountain
will out run most new big power saloon cars and upset most of there drivers
if you got the balls to hang onto it, it will keep up with many a sports car
tows the mini round quite nicely as well

Pad4, that is nice!

We tried a sightly more traditional route - a Defender for the trips into 'darkest' Africa, and a MINI GP for the trips to the shops. I must say the GP is nearly as much fun as a quick well set up Mini. The ride is harsh (mostly due to those runflats), but it farts and pops on overrun and corners just like my first Mini

Okay Pad4, I'll bite.... what the hell is that????
I'm already pretty sure that it wouldn't be legal stateside. For some reason our guv'mint frowns on any vehicle that makes sense. Sigh.

lol- what the hell is that ......

its the result of Mitsubishi deciding that they WERE going to win the Dakar rally at
whatever cost so the built the Pajero Evolution Homologation special.
has a 3.5 V6 with Mivec which alters the cam timing at certain speeds, chassis is all independant suspension but greatly increased
track and suspension movement, very low roll centre due to the aluminium and carbon body panels, believe it or not the fenders and wings and fins are an aerodynamics package designed to keep it stable at high speed.
interior wise it has special recaro seats and all the goodies you expect to find in a serious 4 x4.
Drive train is all beefed up and hand built by ralliart, features front, centre and rear diffs, with lsd as well

5 speed auto wit tiptronic sports selection and mitsubishi super select drive so you can change from 2 wd to 4 wd whilst driving, has lockable diffs etc
No traction control !!!!!

does 0-60 in 7 seconds (ish)

will go over 130 mph derestricted although you cant get tyres to cope with the speed
excellent off road as well , ive been in some serious places in

Just goes to show you can have fun in a modern vehicle, just go find the special versions

Well if anyone can come up with a way of persuading the MD that my next company car should be something exciting please feel free to contact me

Oh, and as it will do 50k miles a year it needs to be pretty frugal

Pad4, sounds like fun... and I know our guv'mint would never allow it. Stupid importation laws....
Since I live in an area that gets snow pretty regularly, we've owned Subarus for years. This year we purchased a new Forester that, "to make it even better", they've added traction control. It takes away the ability to steer with the throttle making it worse in my eyes. Sigh.

frugal its not, between 12 and 19 mpg is normal, has been known to drop to single figures and i have seen 22-23 out of it on a run, good job it has a 75 ltr tank