Cars used to be made to get you somewhere. Now they cost 4 times as much and are full of government-mandated surveillance equipment and random gadgets that are expensive to fix when they break. And they’re twice as heavy.
The only thing that’s gotten better is safety.
I miss when cars were cars
What government mandated surveillance equipment are you referring to?
From 7 July, all new cars and vans sold in the EU must pack a fresh batch of safety features, including infrared cameras that watch the driver’s face.
Exactly what I was referring to. Along with GPS tracking that alerts you if you’re going over the speed limit. Totally won’t be used for anything else, right?
The government mandates all telecommunications to be intercepted and and monitored. Car manufacturers willingly installed celluar modems in their cars for OTA updates and their own data tracking reasons… therefore, the government has surveillance equipment in your car.
Also the EU mandated driver monitoring so you can’t even drive tired anymore (yay for repression), at least let me drive home from work.
Thats mandated in the US aswell, suppose to be implemented by 2030.
Maybe not govt mandated, but used by the governments. New cars have infotainment with GPS trackers, cameras etc. Toyota and Teslas were the worse from a year or two ago for selling your data to companies, especially insurance companies.
A week ago alstate data came out that they paid millions to many apps for your phone to track you like life360, gasbuddy and so on.
Don’t get me started on TVs. Watch gamers nexus on LG TVs. They store 4gb of data including audio, screenshots - even if it’s not connected to the internet. Doctor’s offices, companies or other places that rely on hipa or trade secrets have these TVs sitting around.
Your wifi routers uses beam forming to track you around your house and can be accurate enough to make out complex shapes like faces.
Anyways, I came here to say I have the same generation a4 avant with the 3.2l, I think b7. Just the right loudness exhaust from factory when you floor it and at right rpms it reverberates like a super car because of the vvt.
Honesty the best era for cars is around 2003-2016 depending on the manufacturer. The older ones from around 2008 or so are especially good.
Now they cost 4 times as much
Pricing on cars with similar features and performance have been going up slower than general inflation, but as you mention they keep increasing the features/performance of the base models.
When I was really getting into cars in the 90’s, it seemed like the base models of economy brands were pretty barebones. But over time what previously was optional became standard: air conditioning, automatic transmission, power locks/windows, floor mats, a decent car stereo, cruise control, etc.
And the things that used to differentiate luxury brands/models just became standard over time: traction control, good acceleration/handling, clear coat over the paint, rust resistance. In the 90’s, it was still possible to buy a vehicle that took more than 10 seconds to accelerate to 60mph (~100km/h).
And of course, a bunch of safety stuff became standard in large part because of regulation: airbags, anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, backup cameras. And fuel efficiency has gotten much better on the engineering side, for any given level of performance and vehicle weight. Emissions have similarly improved by regulation.
So cars have gotten so much better, while basically getting more expensive slightly slower than general inflation. So it’s hard to compare apples to apples between decades.
In 20 more years old cars will look like the first picture, because of planned obsolescence.
“we ought to be driving flying cars by now” :D
That audi is around 2008-2011 (15-18yrs), but one gen before that, yes 20 years old.
And cars don’t really age that terribly anymore (at least the 1.9 TDI era). My 2002 golf is (if we ignore the reliability and the swimming pools) way better than the newer 1.6 TDIs I’ve sat in, and it will probably outlast them.
The swimming pools…? Did I miss a scandal or something?
Water in my boot door. Great.
It actually leaks trough the adhesive between the glass and metal. Not really enjoyable. It sounds like a swimming pool on every road except the highways. Will have to add some silicone (or putty) to hopefully stop it (since glass reattachments are expensive.
Also: it’s the car of the Dieselgate era. Those are (in my opinion) the strongest and most reliable diesels ever made. Maybe VW was onto something when cheating the emission tests (well probably they could just add better filters, which would make them less money), but that doesn’t make the cars bad.
I have seen Honda motors that will continue kicking well into 400,000 miles
I think car manufacturers are mildly screwed as the old cars are way overbuilt
Wow, I heard of Hondas. In the EU, the VW 1.9 TDIs are known for lasting into the similar teritories. But mine is under 200.000Kms and will probably rot away before reaching high mileage. But if I can, I’ll keep it good as long as I can.
A6 C5 is a timeless design. Even Škodas used it somewhere early 2010s. Just an unbeatable form.
That is an A4
I know. And this is b7. Kinda like discounted c6.
But C5 is just unbeatable. Perfection in its own. Interestingly, b5 is also quite a nice design but unfortunately only from outside. Interior was bit late and had to catch up. C5’s interior was ahead of its time.
And with the current design trends You can tell, the Audi is 20 years old. I don’t know about You, but I don’t like the 2000s designs. I much prefer the current ones. Especially the EVs.
Meh, the eyes have evolved to be too squinty as a way to deal with LED overbrightness. I like the classic look
I like the 2000’s era designs the most, simple, not crammed with touchscreens and curvy instead of boxy like the newer and older era cars.
The 80’s and 90’s are also cool (like the Mercedes of the era (when it was actually more reliable and comfortable than the cheaper cars)).
I’d rather have some simple knobs over a touch screen and a car that requires software updates for some reason
I meant the outside. Couldn’t agree more on the touchscreen bullshit. I drive a car from 2025 and changing the AC settings is a nightmare. I can only do it while stopping at a red light.
I drive the 20 year old car in your head. Love it.
I drive its 20 year old grand child. It feels like 5 years old.
It is crazy how recent some of the events are that we usually consider ancient. The power of time is that you don’t realize how fast it passes.
Where i live, you can get an “oldtimer plate” for cars tgat are 30 years or older. I would mainly see VW beetles with these plates, or similar cars. To me, that timeframe bever really moved up. To think that my first car, a honda civic coyld run these plates is kinda funny to me.
Is it weird that I kind of appreciate the design language of the Volkswagen in that picture? Moreso than the Audi, at least.
Yeah, that form factor is definitely old people coded at this point, and has always been for as long as I can remember, but I find something quite charming about it. I can’t quite explain it. It’s not nostalgia, because I never owned a car like that before, but I do remember seeing them on the road 30+ years ago and thinking to myself “that’s an old car!”.
I wonder if design trends ever loop back around for cars the same way that it does for fashion? Perhaps not, as I’m sure the industry has purposefully moved away from cars that look like that due to improved safety features or enhanced auto regulations, but if I were interested in buying a car for it’s unique or appealing shape alone, then I would much rather be driving around an old boxy VW Golf than ever be caught dead in a Cybertruck.
They are but I don’t think it’s fully cyclical. Modern boxy Hyundai’s like the new Santa Fe and the ioniq 5 are kind of like that.
I owned an 81 VW Rabbit and I still regret selling it. Incredibly charming car.
Honestly, not weird at all imo. 2000s cars all look like weird bubbly fish to me.
I keep thinking that they just stopped making the Pontiac Firebird…
In Hungary, Fidesz supporters used to claim that the cars on the bottom are all brand new, and thus people are now buying new cars and are rich. In reality, Golf Mk.IIIs are no longer new cars, and there are even newer ones.
What
In Hungary, Fidesz supporters used to claim that the cars on the bottom are all brand new, and thus people are now buying new cars and are rich. In reality, Golf Mk.IIIs are no longer new cars, and there are even newer ones.
20 year old video game in my head:
20 year old video game in reality:
Been playing Twilight Princess on Dusklight android and it’s amazing. Can’t believe it’s 20 years old.
I expected to see Zelda Ocarina of Time in the second picture 💀
Mass effect is 19 years old.
No it isn’t. Can’t be more than 5 years old.
My nephew was telling me about how he dusted off his old console and laughed at how bad the games looked. He was of course talking about his PS3.
One of these days I need to sit him down and subject him to some early 3d games like Battle Arena Toshinden or FFVIII to give him some real pizza-face perspective.
The PS3 is of that era where there was huge hype at the time about how realistic the graphics were (deservedly, to be fair) but when you look at it historically the shortcomings are all too clear, and it’s almost comical.
Games on older consoles couldn’t gun for realism the same way, and so they ironically look better now in retrospect because they just come across as having a particular style of their own.
Even on consoles like the ps1 the games that chased “cutting edge” graphics look so much worse than games that had distinct art styles.
True. There’s always that subset and it kinda looks good, but only for a moment in time.
Some of them did go for realism.
Persian Gulf Inferno was almost banned for being too realistic…
This shit was on the index in Germany for “inciting violence in players” 😅
I will say that with a handful of exceptions the PS3 generally looks worse than the 360, for example Infamous and MGS4 still hold up well enough but Red Dead Redemption does look a good bit rougher on the PS3.
The first 3D game I ever played looked like this:
3d monster maze calling in.
Such a good game and in 16k of RAM
early 3d
Show him Jumping Flash! and see if he can even make sense of it.
I vote you include sonic 3-d. That game makes me throw up with how they made the 3d effect.
Though retro is so popular that lots of modern games still look like the 90s…
I submit as the most wince-worthy example of 20 year old console game graphics:
Fuck
I still consider electric windows to be futuristic show-off fluffery, despite not having actually seen manual winders in a few years.
It would be interesting to see a timeline of when certain features became standard. For example, pushing a button to start a car instead of turning a key. That still seems new to me, even though I’ve driven some cars with that feature that were old enough to be falling apart.
My car is a 2023 and has a turn-key ignition, so pushbutton ignition wasn’t completely standard yet at that point.
Edit: Clarity
Yeah, it’s a gradual process. I’m a bit surprised that in 2023 it wasn’t yet universal. I’m just saying that that feature probably first appeared between 2000 and 2010, so maybe even a quarter century ago, but it still seems new.
I’m reading this while sitting in a rather new electric Renault Zoë where the windows in the back are manual!
I used some the other day and it felt so much better.
We have manual winders. (We down graded our car on purpose for cheaper repairs)
I prefer winders for the front. No need for key in accessory position, and fine control.
Back is tricky
Electric windows go really poorly with that other pair of modern features, turney-offey-when-you-stoppey-engine (that’s the technical name) and button-make-engine-go-not-turney-key.
I was in a car recently where I forgot to close the sunroof, and there didn’t seem to be a way to close the sunroof without re-starting the engine.
It’s hilarious to me how many people are shitting their beds over the Slate pickup coming with crank windows.
All my homies hate repairing window regulators
Done it on a '04 Subaru, absolute pain in the ass that needs two people. Meanwhile the cranks on my '95 Mazda continue to function completely fine.
I’ve never once had to repair power windows in the 20 some years I’ve owned cars.
lucky so and so. every fuckin car, from fuckers bouncing off the car while it’s parked.
i’m a car wreck magnet. of the 20ish car “accidents” i’ve been in, i was in the passenger seat eating lunch for like 15 of them (you lose track after like number seven) i’m not the best data point
my daily driver is a 2015 wrangler with crank windows. 158k. automatic transmission. only “big” fixes were oil cleaned housing and the latest was last month, radiator broke its seal on bottom. simple swap.
I understand now, when my dad said, “I don’t know, they all look alike to me.”
