“Cars today are so much better than 80s cars it’s not funny.”
I would like to add to the truth of that statement.
My dad bought a brand new 1979 Ford van. The engine had to be replaced due to sloppy pistons where one broke a skirt, mileage was before 50,000. They only had a year warranty back then.
I bought a brand new 1980 Bronco. At about 30,000 the timing chain started to jump teeth throwing it out of time. At about the same time the front end’s drive shaft spline wore out causing the drive shaft to slop around. The exhaust system rusted out at 3 years. The special order extra heavy duty battery went dead shortly after a year.
And I also broke a piston. During disassembly the cylinder walls were mic’d and found to be .20” oversized. In other words, the cylinders were purposely bored too large. The measurements were taken at the bottom of the cylinder below ring travel which gives a fairly accurate indication of original bore size. My piston broke at about 42,000 miles.
The list goes on. A couple years later Ford came out with their motto Quality Is Job One.
That Bronco was one hell of a POS!
I have four cars that were all built in the 21st century. All of them have over 100,000 miles, one of them has over $230,000 mi and two of them have over 180,000 miles on them.
I was asking a mechanic one day why is it that engines last so long nowadays and his response was something like this: remember back in the day when car enthusiasts would blueprint their engines? Nowadays all engines are blueprinted at the factory.
I bough two 79 custom ordered vans . Drove them to 225,000 . no complaints. They just got too many rust holes.