[Arragonis]

Are we discussing the idea of a car having a long life in production in a stable condition - e.g. Model T, VW Bug, VW Type 2 etc. - or vehicles which last a long time in use without breaking ?

They aren't always the same thing - couple of examples (perhaps not the best ones) - An example of a long lived car could be the Merc 250D - long out of production for newer and flashier models but you would struggle to kill one in everyday use.

At the other end of the scale the 2CV is a very elegant and efficient design intended to be cheap to own and run for the target market. It lasted with some refinements between 1948 and the 1990s - recognisably the same car.

But it was also built down to a price and although the mechanical parts would last well the bodywork disolved around them. This was part of the design though, they would be cheap to more or less be thrown away.

(a slight variation on the 2VC being discarded is that new bodies and chassis are available for them nowadays which means when they do disolve you can rebuild them easily, same for old Land Rovers and not to mention classic (mainly Brit) cars like MGs and the like where complete new bodyshells are being made on a medium / large scale.)

We are expecting car makers to improve things all the time like safety and emissions and economy - stricter standards for all of these things. To do so partly they have to sell cars and make money, and part of that is the "new model year" approach which most of us on EM would ignore anyway, except if a particular year had an efficiency improvement like a longer dinal drive etc.

Apologies, I don't know what the answer is - this kind of just struck me as a related point.