Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
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Long ago GM adopted the concept of "planned obsolescence" when you could buy a 57 Chevy for $1600 new. Maybe you feel that $40k + spent on a car today is chicken feed, but lets see where that $40k gets you the day the warranty runs out. Your resale value will be pitiful.
regards
Mech
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Exactly... which is why one should never buy a daily driver vehicle new. There are plenty of used vehicles sold in the last decade that are reliable, comfortable, fuel efficient, and safe.
And while I can't argue that your 1971 vehicle meets all your criteria, it is unlikely that it would meet my criteria for daily driver / cross country driver with the comfort, efficiency, and safety features I expect to have for me & my family. As a group, the vehicles built new in the past 20 years are significantly more reliable (and comfortable, fuel efficient, and safe) than the vehicles built the 20 years before that.
I do agree that it would be hard for modern vehicles to meet the "fewer than 1/10 of 1%" replaced parts that you have, but I don't agree that unique vehicles such as the Volt are automatically destined for the recycle bin within 40 years because of their complexity... maybe a larger percentage of the parts will be recycled, but I suspect the vehicles as a whole will be sought after by the current generation of folks who embrace the technology... just look at the first gen Honda Insight... 20+ years old with a fairly high resale value and there is a generation of folks keeping them running and getting absolutely incredible FE out of them... in some cases even when the electric assist is disabled! The Volt is another vehicle like that... it will be tweaked, hacked, reverse engineered, modified ... and because of the ability to modify, the ability to use it like an EV for short trips while still being able to drive it across country, and the uniqueness of the vehicle, I believe the resale value will likely remain fairly high.
It would be interesting to see, 40 years down the road, what the % of Volts are on the road vs the % of your 1971 vehicle on the road today. It may not be a fair comparison since the production numbers are likely different, but I'd hazard a guess that the Volt % will be higher.