If airplanes are built to last 30 to 20 years, why not cars?

[SheilaT]

110. Thank you for those details.

Among the things I remember quite vividly from the 50's and 60's was how often a car would break down. It was simply expected. Granted, my parents could not afford very good cars -- everything they ever bought was used, back when that was something of a dirty word -- and I can't begin to count the times a car would simply break down, and we'd be at the side of the road, awaiting a good samaritan to help out. Or flat tires. Ohh, the times we had to change a tire.

I'm 64 now, have been driving since I was sixteen, owned my own cars since I was 18. I've actually had two and only two flat tires in all these years, even though my early driving years were within that time frame when cars were less reliable. Nowadays I have AAA. Hopefully all of you readers have some sort of roadside assistance program of your own. I've not often had to use it, but when I had a high speed blow-out on I25 just north of Trinidad, Colorado four years ago, I was very glad for AAA. And that was only the second time in all my years of driving I've had a flat tire.

Still, I can remember when I was young, the expectation that your car would break down periodically. Gather around me, young people, and listen to the tales I tell by the firelight. Cars used to be unreliable. You could only hope to have good luck, or maybe the good (monetary) fortune to afford new cars every other year. Nowadays, even the makes and models that I formerly scorned as total crap are reliable. We expect a car to go 100,000 miles at a minimum. Those of us who trade in a car with lesser mileage do so because we prefer to drive newer cars, or perhaps for some other whimsical reason. The reliability of all cars is vastly better than it was fifty, forty, or even thirty years ago. And that's good.

They don't make them like they used to. Praise the goddess.