Comment by Gravityloss
3 hours ago
Porsche had a research program about a very reliable car in the 70s. It has some odd technical choices from today's perspective. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/when-porsch...
One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one would assume they could get beefier suspension and transmission and high displacement downtuned engines.
In general new cars are still vastly better than old ones. 90:s cars rusted from everywhere after ~8 years while most cars nowadays have zinc coating and more plastic and are still mostly fine after 15 years.
> One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one would assume they could get beefier suspension and transmission and high displacement downtuned engines.
Here in the UK until recently it was all Skoda Octavias, nice simple comfortable cars with a reliable diesel engine. Prior to that, it was all Citroën Xantias - again, nice simple comfortable (really comfortable with their hydraulic suspension) cars with a big reliable diesel engine.
It's not uncommon to see them hit well over half a million miles, often in less than five years.
I don't think it's a coincidence that an enormous number of rideshare/delivery drivers drive priuses though. Reliable, not too expensive, low maintenance, and high mpg is kind of exactly what you'd expect them to look for.
The only slight pain in those priuses is removing the windshield wiper assembly to get to the spark plugs closest to the firewall. It's not like they didn't have enough room in the engine bay to the left to better engineer this. But it's something that you rarely have to do. Maybe 2-3 times for the life of the car if it reaches 300k+ miles.
Not to mention still roomy!
> while most cars nowadays have zinc coating and more plastic and are still mostly fine after 15 years.
In your part of the world, maybe. I live in the middle of the salt belt in the US and we get about 10 years out of most cars. That's when you start seeing rust holes in the fenders around the wheels, when most of the frame has flaked away and the floor pans become involuntary structural elements.
If you're a car nut who spends extra time and money on preventive maintenance and rustproofing, you can get a few more years. But the rust comes for your car at some point anyway.
Car manufacturers know how to make the frames and bodies last longer, this is not an unsolvable manufacturing and design challenge. It's just that nobody is getting a raise for going to their boss and saying, "I know how to make the company sell slightly fewer cars..."
I live up North (capital N) from you, where we have ~4 months of calcium spread on our roads to manage the accumulating ice every winter. A well-maintained car has the chance to live long enough to succumb to rust from that.
Rustproofing is still a good treatment to get done to delay and minimize damage, but it's a thorough and slightly expensive job.
People who have a hobby car usually retire it in a garage from November to April-May instead.
Just look at what's on the road today, there are many more older cars still running than in the past. Even in the salt belt.