Here Are Your Opinions On Whether Cars Are Still Improving

They are getting worse with ridiculous government regulations forcing complexity and cost increases. CVTs and 10+ speed transmissions, stoplight shut off, auto break, & lane keeping systems, and now the entire dashboard is nothing but digital screens that will fail, and tiny overworked turbo engines in cars that were normally powered by a v6 or v8.

Suggested by: Michael Peteraf (Facebook)

By the metrics and KPI’s cars today are better than they ever have been. There’s mountains of evidence to support this claim. A Toyota Camry is faster around a race circuit than a bedroom poster 80's Ferrari, and some bone stock pickup trucks are faster down the drag strip than the fastest Muscle Cars of the 70's. Economy cars get better fuel mileage than they ever have, and emissions are down across the board. High end luxury cars are quieter, smoother, and more opulent than even 1960's Caddy’s and Lincolns.

But by how they make us feel, how they engage the driver, and the feedback on the controls, they’re far worse, subjectively.

But Sweet Trav, performance cars are better than they have ever been! Have you driven a new sports car, hot hatch, or modern pony car? Of course I have. The very same performance metrics that make these cars so blisteringly fast don’t allow for your average driver to tap into them on a regular basis, safely or legally on a public road.

The best car is one that engages the driver and encourages them to drive it. Modern cars fall into two categories, those falling into the first category encourage you to forget that you’re driving, numbing every possible sensation. Those falling into the second category give you so much untapped power and potential that it’s easy for most people to run out of skill or run afoul of traffic laws.

Finding a balance between the two is exceptionally rare, I can personally think of 3 in the past 20 years. Sadly very few cars that find that perfect balance have made it to production because the OEM marketing machines push the vehicles into one of the two extremes.

I’ve used this comparison before with electric cars, but it fits with the quandary here.

Modern cars are the equivalent of a shiny new Apple watch, it does everything you could ask a watch to do and so much more, but its never going to have the impact on the owner that a 1954 Rolex Submariner does. It’s only a watch, and not a particularly accurate or durable one. But it’s undeniably cool, elegant, and impressively designed. I know I’d rather have a classic Submariner on my wrist than an Apple Watch, not that I can afford a Rolex.

Suggested by: Sweet Trav

You can go to a dealership for any of the big 3 and buy a car with well over 700hp right now. Or an electric sedan that can smoke all of them. That’s pretty incredible in my book.

Suggested by: Jon Bickford (Facebook)

I think there will be valid criticism that tech is ruining the modern cars. However I think we’re at a fantastic time in car history. You’ve never been able to get so much for relatively so little. Look at what econo crap boxes you could buy brand new 20-30 years ago, now even the cheap cars look nice, drive OK, and have bluetooth, AC, and most creature comforts you’d want while being much safer than cars of yore. Heck there’s a Kia SUV that’s one the U.S.’s best sellers, what a time to be alive.

Suggested by: mike

Certain models are, especially the smaller-sized models getting the tech/comfort options. High end though, no, not really. As cool as the new S Class is, it’s really no “better” than the last one, just more opulent.

Suggested by: Jake T Kennedy (Facebook)

The issue with cars right now is not the mechanicals, but the stylistic design choices and the interfaces. Mechanically speaking, cars have never been better [except Tesla, which has mechanical and materials problems that would make even British Leyland point and laugh at them], but they are just so damn ugly. And the proliferation of touchscreens are a disaster waiting to happen. If we could have today’s mechanicals with old school physical switches, then we’d be just about golden. I’m leaving the fugly grill and jowl design choices out of it, because aesthetics is a personal thing.

Suggested by: skeffles

I really think they could be so much more reliable. Advancement is great however can we opt for less advancement in order to get costs down?

The venerable Toyota pickup of the 80’s and 90’s could be made not to rust out and be around for generations. I’d say it’s far better to spend your money on building an older vehicle using today’s improvements and technology than spending $70,000 on a truck that tries very hard to be a car.

Suggested by: Luke Potosky (Facebook)

Cars are getting safer, and getting “better” at insulating their occupants from the world outside.

As machines, they are getting worse.

I have a ‘68 Porsche that is more dangerous than any of my modern cars, and it’s got absolutely no “features” like infotainment, cruise control, or even a clock.

What it does have is the ability to become an extension of my own body when I drive. You don’t even need a Porsche 912 to get that, you get the same thing driving a Fiat from the ‘70s or an original Beetle.

Researchers have shown that our “body schema,” the thing that our brains perceive as our body, actually expands to include the tools that we use. When people say they feel like they become one with a car, they’re not using hyperbole. If a car is mechanical enough and provides real feedback to what’s going on, your brain will literally begin to include it in your body schema.

To me, that’s a “better” car than one built by a company whose CEO says “all input is error.”

Suggested by: curbwatching

Progress usually involves trade-off’s.

People say stuff from the 30's and 40's is really serviceable. This is true, but they weren’t very efficient and didn’t give many creature comforts.

Now we have cars that are expected to last over 200kmi but have lost much of their serviceability and are very comfortable.

I think “building better” is really about your intended application and what kind of owner you are.

Honestly I would like to see a modern car maker focus on serviceability again, let the owners decide how long it lasts.

Suggested by: Mitch Eckler (Facebook)

Tough one.

I compare it to movies in some ways. With the modern films and high financial risk, movies are made, and remade, to the tastes of focus groups. This guarantees a level of success and risk that is acceptable to the studio and investors. Risky and inventive/creative movies are fine, but they have to be super cheap to make.

I feel like cars are the same now. We don’t see anything terribly interesting from any of the larger manufactures. Take my favorite whipping post, GM, and their ever-increasing line of badge-engineered, look-alike, CUVs and SUVs. Tell me you can spot the difference between a Terrain and Acadia. GM isn’t the only one, of course, but it’s an example. It’s a return to the 80's and the Cavalier/Skyhawk/Firenza/Sunbird/Cimmaron/+8 more global variants. Just change the bumper cover and tail lights, and voila, another new model!

The area cars are getting better: safety, handling (as in making a fat pig handle better than it has any right to), and, somewhat, tech. Not getting better: styling, variation, lighting, size discrepancy...

Suggested by: bae125

I’m going to echo most of the other sentiments in this comment section. Are cars still getting better? The answer is a strong: sort of.

On the one hand: yes. Cars regularly last over 100,000 miles without any major service. Good tires and brakes are readily available for every car, and even many older vehicles can be retrofitted with modern disc brakes. Maintenance for the amount of time that most people own their newly-purchased cars is usually just oil changes and maybe brakes. We no longer have to synchronize carburetors or set valve clearances, and can just plug in an OBDII reader to diagnose some initial problems. The humble Camry can be purchased with a 300-hp engine. New cars are great for people who don’t want to care about cars!

On the other hand: no. Car designs have eschewed visibility and drivers now have to depend on cameras and sensors to be able to park effectively. Those sensors have been embedded in the plastic bumper cover that is meant to be easily replaceable in a low-speed collision, so those collisions now cost thousands of dollars. There are plastic covers over everything, and the clips that keep those covers on break easily. I have never had the code from the OBDII reader actually be helpful in diagnosing any problem I’ve ever had in my car (anecdotal, I know). Most new vehicles on the road are SUVs and CUVs, which block visibility for vehicles behind them. Driver engagement is at an all-time low: many new cars feel disconnected from the road and are full of screens and alarms. The aforementioned humble Camry is a 3,500-lb, front-wheel-drive, automatic that costs $33,000. New cars are pretty meh for a lot of people who care about cars.

All in all, I’ve been thinking of getting rid of my basket-case car, but I can’t find a new naturally-aspirated, four-door sedan or wagon with a manual transmission and rear-wheel drive (or rear-bias AWD). Also, current electric offerings are all about how much tech they can be crammed with (and I don’t have the capability to install a charger). Colour me uninterested.

Suggested by: TheSchrat

Cars all became our friend who aced the SAT, got his business degree, and is now doing a solid job raising his two kids in the suburbs while working his way up through middle management at a regional accounting firm. He’s a good friend and can hold his liquor on the semi-monthly occasion he comes out with us.

But turns out, I miss our stoner friend who decided to work a salmon farm in rural Alaska for a year and has a new theory on the origin of the universe every time we see him.

To go all Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on your happy ass: is better, better? Because if getting the most technology, the strongest brakes, the best NVH, the lowest coefficient of drag, and the best fit & finish is better, then yeah, cars are still getting better. (Tesla has been put in Time Out for the purposes of this exercise)

But if better is a weird shape, a nonsensical form factor, a fun color, a sticky shifter that clicks sublimely into 4th gear the 20% of the time it’s cooperative, and a headlight design that kinda makes you smile when you look at it from across the parking lot, then no. We’ve gotten so, so much worse. We lost the nonsensical parts of cardom that make cars so endearing—the Torchinsky factor, if you will.

Cars are still getting better by every metric you can find on a Monroney sticker. But they’re not getting better.

Suggested by: Dan’s Dance Revolution