Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[LizzieMaine]

As I was driving to work today in the Plodge, the car ahead of me was a 1914 Model T Ford. It was disturbing for me to realize that that car was already an "antique" when my car was built in 1941.

 

[BlueTrain]

My wife's grandfather, who died probably over 50 years ago, owned a 1929 Ford. I believe it may have been the only car he ever owned and it was still in use long enough for my wife to remember going for a ride in it. That would have made it probably around 30 years old at the time. My wife's daily transportation is only 17 years old by comparison. The Ford, which I believe was a Model A, was still in possession of the family when my father-in-law passed away seven years ago, although it was not in running condition. Neither was the Corvair.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were still a couple of Model A trucks around town in regular use when I was growing up. Our police chief's personal car was a 1937 DeSoto sedan. They weren't considered "antique cars," they were just old, used cars. I feel the same way about my Plodge -- it's registered as an "antique auto," but it doesn't feel like one. "Antique Autos" have a lot of brass and the headlights run on carbide or acetylene.

This photo of my home town was taken about 1960. Still a lot of "old cars" in use. (My parents lived, and I lived until the age of two, in the second floor walkup in the building to the left of the 1930s car. This apartment had no hot water or bathtub. Yay for Postwar Prosperity.)

 

[Fading Fast]

Growing up on the '70s, cars didn't feel really dated until you hit the late '50s with the bigger body styles and fins, etc. My first car when I turned 16 in '80 was a 1967 Chevy - didn't feel dated and I never got kidded about it - but a friend had a '60 (I think) Buick that looked "old," "dated" and we would joke with him about his "old" car. It seems that to feel old or dated in cars is both about time passing and style changes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A '30s car in the '70s is the same as a '70s car is today. Ooooweeee.

 

[EngProf]

A '30s car in the '70s is the same as a '70s car is today. Ooooweeee.

I have a '79 Cutlass and people come up and try to buy it like people used to do back in the '70's when they encountered a 1930's "classic".

 

[tonyb]

In the Puget Sound region, where the roads rarely if ever see corrosive snow-melting stuff, and where it is reliably cloudy and cool, cars suffer relatively little on account of exposure to the weather. So a 40-plus-year-old car in decent condition isn't such an unusual sight. It's such that a reasonable person might consider dropping a fresh engine and tranny into a not particularly distinctive (or "collectible") old car with a couple-three or four hundred thousand miles on the clock. And to rebuild the suspension, and to recover the seats, and ...

 

[tonyb]

A '30s car in the '70s is the same as a '70s car is today. Ooooweeee.

Is it so that a whole lot of pre-War cars got scrapped during the conflict, so that the metals might be used for munitions? Or did those 16-mm films we saw in elementary school, the ones showing a seemingly endless stream of Model T's and Model A's headed for the smelter, leave an inaccurate impression?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Only the junkiest of junkers got scrapped --- and a lot of the film clips were, in fact, staged. The reality of the situation was that, with new car manufacturing stopped in early 1942, and all new cars in stock impounded by the OPA and rationed out carefully for the duration, if you had any kind of a car that would run, at all, no matter how old and how battered, you kept it running by hook or crook, or you walked. By 1944, it wasn't uncommon to see all sorts of "antique" autos in daily use -- if you had a Stanley Steamer or a Baker Electric, you were sitting in the catbird seat, because you didn't have to worry about gas rationing! But in general, wartime cars were a very raggedy, patched-together lot.

The mass junkings of prewar cars came in the early fifties -- right after the war, when reconversion happened, it was almost impossible to get a new car because of backed-up orders. It was common to be on a two-year waiting list for some popular makes or models, so if you couldn't get a new one you kept on driving your beater until you could. But by 1950 or so, supply had caught up with demand, and a lot of fifteen-year-old cars were so beaten up they were either sold to some hot-rod kid for twenty bucks or junked. Some lasted longer though -- my grandparents kept their 1936 Chevy until 1956. (The replacement only lasted five years before the rust got it.)

 

[Stanley Doble]

Lizzie you might be interested in an April 1949 MoToR magazine I have. The cover shows a down in the mouth looking used car dealer in front of a lot full of prewar cars, and the lead story is to the effect that the postwar car shortage and seller's market is over, along with a sharp drop in used car values.

The Model A was popular in small town and rural areas long after production ceased. As late as the mid fifties a good model A sold for a premium price and was less likely to be scrapped than any other old car. They were practically as good as a Jeep on bad roads or off road, easy to fix and easy to get parts for. You could still order a rebuilt engine from the Sears catalog for under $100 bucks.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember Model A parts in the Sears catalog well into the 1970s -- a lot of them were turned into woods skidders up here, and some are still being used for log-hauling and similar jobs.

 

[tonyb]

I'm old enough, barely, to recollect archetypal crusty old-timers driving archetypal pre-'30s jalopies for purposes other than displaying the cars. Among the most distant of my memories are of the Old Man barking at the decrepit old drivers of those decrepit old cars to get those rust buckets off the road. (The Old Man was all about V8s and four-barrels, and exercising his vocal cords.) But those "antique" cars were, for the most part, only 30 to 40 years old then. Has me wondering if cars made from 1976 to 1986 look as old through the eyes of youngsters as those Jed Clampett cars looked to me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Over the more than 19,300 days of my life, I estimate that I've probably consumed more than 10,000 bottles of Coca-Cola. If I returned every one of those bottles for the current five-cent deposit, I'd only get about $500 back.

Unless I could somehow get those bottles to Michigan.

 

[BlueTrain]

The earlier cars, at least of the everyday variety (no Duesenbergs, that is), were made with rough roads in mind. Paved roads outside of town were not to be found everywhere. Mostly, though, it just meant good ground clearance and a frame that would stand being towed by a team of horses or mules.

We've had the engine replaced in one of our cars--the old one. Supposedly it is better to buy a used car with good bodywork and a poor engine rather than the other way around because the engine is easier to fix. Personally, though, I couldn't wait to replace my old car, which was only twelve years old with less than 150,000 miles on it. Cars just don't last the way they used to.

I can vividly recall my father talking to someone where he worked and discussing the merits of De Sotas. I was sad when they quit making DeSotas but I was heartbroken when Oldsmobiles were discontinued.

 

[tonyb]

The data suggest that modern cars cover considerably more miles before they are scrapped than did their predecessors. I do believe that them's the facts, millions of personal anecdotes to the contrary notwithstanding.

However, I would much prefer rebuilding a 50- or 60- or 70-year-old car over most anything built in the past couple-three decades, because when these newer cars are done, they're truly done, and prolonging their lives at any reasonable expense is a dubious proposition. But, provided the maintenance and repairs were faithfully carried out, that day of reckoning ought come after those vehicles have covered at least a couple hundred thousand miles. And well more than that, in many cases.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My '97 Toyota ran flawlessly for the eleven years I owned it. Until the rear end rusted out and there was no way to fix it. No slow patchwork death for that car -- in fact, it drove to the scrapper under its own power. But when the body rots out, that's it. Around here that usually happens between 150,000 and 175,000 miles depending on the severity of the winter.

 

[sheeplady]

My grandparents were driving cars from the thirties in the 1950s and 60s. My grandfather was a trained mechanic and he ran a shop nights and weekends. For some strange reason I had always imagined them driving newish cars when I was young. When i was about 12 my father was having trouble with one of his old cars and my mother helped him start it up. She commented she drove cars like that all the time, but my father didn't have the expertise because his family had more "modern cars" by the late 1960s. My mother was not a car person at all (she could never get the tractor started even if it was rolling down a hill).

My grandparents never owned a car less than 15 years old if not 20... even though my grandfather frequently turned cars around for money newer than that, they never kept one that he considered "easy money."

 

[tonyb]

My '97 Toyota ran flawlessly for the eleven years I owned it. Until the rear end rusted out and there was no way to fix it. No slow patchwork death for that car -- in fact, it drove to the scrapper under its own power. But when the body rots out, that's it. Around here that usually happens between 150,000 and 175,000 miles depending on the severity of the winter.

Many advantages to unibody construction. But once the cancer gets 'em, it takes many, many hours of body shop time to fix 'em correctly, and in only the rarest of cases would the undertaking be cost effective.

Although many an owner of a well-used MGB, an early unibody car, have found it worthwhile to replace the lower structural body sections, most notably the inner and outer sills, or what we colonials call rocker panels. And the floors typically get replaced at the same time, because if the sills are gone, the floors resemble those in Fred Flintstone's car. This work is done frequently enough (MGBs were quite popular) that the pieces are readily available, as are step-by-step guides for the committed DIYer.

 

[Trenchfriend]

My '97 Toyota ran flawlessly for the eleven years I owned it. Until the rear end rusted out and there was no way to fix it. No slow patchwork death for that car -- in fact, it drove to the scrapper under its own power. But when the body rots out, that's it. Around here that usually happens between 150,000 and 175,000 miles depending on the severity of the winter.

That's curious!
My family got no Toyota, but of course, in Germany Toyota was very popular and very very common, especially in the 90's and until the 2000's and it was surely because of their general reliability. But, very often, when I saw all these 90's-Toyota Corollas and so on, I truly wondered and always thought, they must have a general rusting problem, which isn't so visible on other car-brands. And I remember rusted backsides, too.

But now, Toyota is just to expensive for the masses, here. So, you can see nearly no newer Toyota.

All four Kia's in my family got no visible problem on quickened rusting, despite road-salt. Our Kia Sephia from 1995 seemed to have not this rusting-problem, like all these Toyotas. Maybe the rust-preparation from production-plant.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

And I remember rusted backsides, too..

Avoid sitting on wet grass.