Do You Prefer Newer or Older cars?

[CrutyRammers]

Both, really.
Tin top is a Fiesta ST at the mo, and a better balanced package for a "everyman driver's car" you'd struggle to find. Just very well sorted, fun to drive, and easy to live with. Just works.
I've also got an MGB. Lowered, tuned, fun to drive, in an old-school way, in that everything is harder. Which is better probably depends on the weather tbh. I much, much prefer a modern car for going to work at 6am in a january blizzard.

Old cars are definitely cooler though. I'd love a stable of resto-mods, capris and escorts and the like, and I always fancied (but never had) an Integra...but that's probably just an age thing.

[PH User]

I prefer good cars to bad cars, the age is irrelevant.

[tberg]

I much prefer "old" cars from the late 1960s or early 1970s for styling. I think GM's greatest styling exercises came in the 60s with cars like the Buick Riviera, the 1968 Pontiac GTO, '68-70 Chevelles, and of course the Corvettes of that era. I also think that European sports cars like the Miura, the De Tomaso Pantera, Maserati Bora etc. from the same era look far and away better than anything coming out in that genre today. Of course, I appreciate the safety and reliability of modern cars. I can say that my 2010 Jaguar XKR, which has just passed 183,000 miles is the best, most reliable car I've ever owned (and with 600hp, quite a lot of fun, too!), and I wouldn't want to give that up. But in the olden days, carmakers were more interested in doing their own styling without peaking at every other manufacturer's ideas and without worrying about pedestrian collision standards or squeezing every last mile out of a gallon of petrol. It amuses me that a few years ago, one carmaker decided that round or oval exhaust tips were no longer in vogue and change to rectangular or trapezoidal tips. Within a year, every single car brand abandoned the traditional and went with the same as if there was a functional reason for doing so. Most cars and all SUVs look so much alike now, that you can't tell the difference anymore.

[paulrockliffe]

PH User said:

I prefer good cars to bad cars, the age is irrelevant.

Well except all the good cars are old cars........ :-)

[PH User]

paulrockliffe said:

PH User said:

I prefer good cars to bad cars, the age is irrelevant.

Well except all the good cars are old cars........ :-)

I don't agree.

[2manycars]

I definitely prefer driving the older cars, especially what the Italians were producing in the early 60’s.
These are fun and entertaining cars to drive with a list of idiosyncrasies. Compared to their modern counterparts that leave me feeling a bit numb. I just don’t think modern cars as a whole feel entertaining, yes they are safe and practical but they don’t make you rush out on a Sunday morning to take an extraordinarily long drive to the shops because it excites you, like I said though, with the exception of a few cars.

[SidewaysSi]

PH User said:

paulrockliffe said:

PH User said:

I prefer good cars to bad cars, the age is irrelevant.

Well except all the good cars are old cars........ :-)

I don't agree.

True.

But the most engaging cars tend to be older cars as they aren't hobbled by the ste that needs to come in new cars. So chances are old cars tend to be more fun.

Add in the limitations of the road network and ever increasing grip and performance limits of new stuff and many of us have lost a chunk of interest in new cars. Even those thought to be "fun". It's all relative...

Of course people find fun in different ways - some like to slide about on the limit of grip as much of the time as possible, some are straight line heroes and others like to play around with their infotainment screens.

[exelero]

Triumph Man said:

You make an interesting point about your 156 - a colleague described my 2001 BMW 530i as "an old new car", and my 1995 520i as a "new old car". Like your Alfa, my E39 has good aircon, nice interior, cruises well without screaming its bks off. Apart from a load of infotainment ste a driver used to a "new" car could get in it and not feel like they'd stepped back to the dark ages. Hard to believe that both our cars are 20 years old!

To be fair those beemers were built to last Nowadays cars are built to last the warranty period

[exelero]

2manycars said:

I definitely prefer driving the older cars, especially what the Italians were producing in the early 60’s.
These are fun and entertaining cars to drive with a list of idiosyncrasies. Compared to their modern counterparts that leave me feeling a bit numb. I just don’t think modern cars as a whole feel entertaining, yes they are safe and practical but they don’t make you rush out on a Sunday morning to take an extraordinarily long drive to the shops because it excites you, like I said though, with the exception of a few cars.

You have a few. So please tell us, which car that you drove/ own was the most fun ?

[2manycars]

exelero said:

You have a few. So please tell us, which car that you drove/ own was the most fun ?

My 250 and 275 are my favourites because they were pretty much like race cars for the road. If I was to go modern then I’d go with my TDF or Aperta with the Fiat 695 and M2 following closely.

[glazbagun]

To go for a drive, older mostly. Just to get somewhere a modern thing is fine, but driving pleasure is an afterthought these days in the same way that crash safety was in the 80's.

That said, old cars suffer from survivorship bias. Not everything in the past was an Integra Type R/Lotus Elan- there was plenty of dross that deserved to be forgotten. A cheap Hyundai from today would blow everything away if it went back 20 years in a time machine.

Edited by glazbagun on Tuesday 29th June 00:18

[Esceptico]

For daily use has to be a modern car. However for fun something from the 60s/70s. Ferrari or early 911.

[Mr Tidy]

Sensei Rob said:

I prefer older cars in general, but there are always a few exceptions. I'll break it down by categories:

Roadster:

Old: Older mx5, Mr2, MGB, old Z4, S2000, lotus elan, old boxster
New: Mx5, Z4, etc.

Winner: old cars, but only just. What I like about some older roadsters is that you can get removable hardtops for them. Nowadays, they'll direct you to a different model.

Cheap performance:
Old: Capri, Manta, mk1 GTI, Ae86, Lotus sunbeam, mk1 Escort
New: Hot hatches, Subaru sti

Winner: old. There's something about those old cars.

Sports cars:
Old: 240z, older 911s, E30 M3, Mk4 Supra, R34 Skyline
New: M2, 718 Cayman, M4, new 911s, mk5 Supra, R35 GTR

Winner: old

Supercars:
Old: F40, Countach, 959, XJ220, McLaren F1
New: laferrari, Aventador, 918, Chiron, that new Gordon Murray thing

Winner: new - just more dramatic and more of what you expect a supercar to be.

Luxury cars:
Old: old Rolls Royce
New: new Rolls Royce

Winner: new

Well on your Roadster choice you can get a hard-top for a Z4, but it will probably cost the best part of £1K. But then the factory hard-top on my mate's MGA is probably worth far more!

Cheap performance. Well a decent 2.8i Capri is probably £10K these days, but in 2014 I bought a BMW 325ti Compact for just under £2K that was better in every way - and I had two 2.8i Capris in the 80s. Newer works better for me!

I can't offer anything on Supercars, but I'd prefer older just because 3 pedals were available.

As for Luxury I'd rather have a Bentley GT if I had to choose.

But it's an interesting comparison.

[kiseca]

glazbagun said:

To go for a drive, older mostly. Just to get somewhere a modern thing is fine, but driving pleasure is an afterthought these days in the same way that crash safety was in the 80's.

That said, old cars suffer from survivorship bias. Not everything in the past was an Integra Type R/Lotus Elan- there was plenty of dross that deserved to be forgotten. A cheap Hyundai from today would blow everything away if it went back 20 years in a time machine.

Edited by glazbagun on Tuesday 29th June 00:18

This is absolutely true. A handful of old cars were, and still are, good fun to drive. The majority were white goods in their day, and added to that there was a much wider spread of quality in those white goods. If you go back to the '80s it was still possible to buy some truly awful new cars. Nowadays it's quite difficult to buy something new that is actually a terrible car, unless you trek out to somewhere like India or South America. Anything new now, at least as a white goods vehicle, is most likely to be reasonably reliable, reasonably safe, able to manage motorways speeds, able to sit in traffic and not overheat. Maybe there are exceptions, but we don't seem to see them anymore like we used to with the old Dacias and Skodas and of course the infamous Trabant.

And I woulld say the situation today is similar. Most current cars aren't interesting. A handful are. A modern Giulia, with any engine, is as good today as a 75 was in its day. Hot hatches have gone a size lower but still offer fun and engagement. Affordable sportscars and coupes like the MX-5, Boxster, GT86 were mostly absent in the 1980s. You could get a FWD Lotus Elan or an Alfa Spider which, by that time a 30 year old design in its fourth generation, had gone soft and slow. A V8 AMG is brimming with character, mostly from that crazy engine.

Cars are certainly different today but it's still possible to find an entertaining one.

The '90s revolution in Japanese sports coupes was still to come. In the 1980s it was the original 300ZX and the Mk 3 Supra. Quickish cars with swoopy bodies that didn't handle. Power steering was absurdly light. The company Opel Monza I drove, which didn't have ABS as most cars back then didn't, would lock the back wheels before the fronts under heavy braking. The very popular Nissan / Datsun Sunny 1400 pickup was even worse (yet I'd still like one...)

Overall I prefer older cars because the best ones had less weight and less grip to get in the way of communication and they could engage like nothing else at any speed, but I don't feel hard done by with today's choices. It's still possible to buy a modern car, at quite a modest price, that is enjoyable to drive without being on a race track.

[MikeM6]

PH User said:

I prefer good cars to bad cars, the age is irrelevant.

Does interesting fall under good and dull under bad? If so I agree.