Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
New also means more expensive. When adjusted for inflation, the price of a new car has more than doubled in the last 30 years.
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What you get for a new car has also increased radically. 3 or 4 catalytic converters, 10 airbags, crumple zones and whiz-bang electronics all cost money and they weren't included back then. Cars have gotten a lot bigger. They have horsepower numbers that would have been unbelievable 30 years ago
and emissions numbers that would have been unbelievable 30 years ago. Fit & finish, NVH and reliability standards back then were practically nonexistent compared to today, and that's without even getting into mechanical reliability. Does anyone today know who Earl Scheib was?
I read a comparison once that used the first Accord as an example, but they had to compare it with the (then modern) Civic because both cars had grown so much in size and weight that they had to switch in order to compare apples to apples. Using the auto industry's
"forcing us to add this feature will add $200 (or whatever)
to the cost of a new car" statements and then adjusting for inflation, the two cars compared very well on cost.