How long before that new car is just a throw away item?

My gen-1 Paseo was 20yo when sold in WA for $200 to the kid of a friend of mine -- had 285K, on the original clutch, and still got 35 mpg.

There was a JDM 1.3L turbo version of that car's engine (4E-FTE) that bolted right in, provided you had the right ECU and pigtail harness adapters -- could take a lot more boost than OEM, as in 180 wheel hp with no real hit on reliability. Back when I was thinking about it Y2Ks... getting a 4E-FTE shipped from JDM cost as much for shipping as the motor / trans, something crazy like $600 shipped. So you could have a 180 whp, 2000-lb-soaking-wet FWD rocket roller skate, for $600 and your own labour to drop the drivetrain in (probably needed an LSD and shorter gearing from a Starlet C52 5-spd, whilst we're dreaming )

Could kick myself for not going for it in Y2Ks, would've been a terror to the BMW crowd of the Dubya years

 

Right now they're tolling with the punches like everybody else.

No more V8s, eh?
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/worlds-fastest-pick-truck-meet-777bhp-v8-ram-rumble-bee-srt
https://www.jeep.com/twelve4twelve/wrangler-willys-392.html

 

What gets me about the '4-cylinder turbo to replace V8s' path in up-to-half-tonne in the States... is the reason why mfrs added cylinder count in the first place, early 20th century.

Ford had lots of Fours in the early 20th century -- selling them as fast as could be built. But the issue with Inline-Fours, is they only get a combustion stroke in two places in a crank revolution. When Ford introduced the Flathead V8, that added two more places on the crank, torque could be applied... and thus gangsters bought them up

This is why 60-deg V12s feel almost effortless under throttle -- you have six places on the crank each cylinder is applying torque, smoothing out the delta between them. Trucks that haul or climb w/ 4WD need this torque, thus the ubiquitous 90-deg V8 in most passenger gas applications.

But when you turbocharge an I-4... all you do is increase the amt of push, until the next cylinder can fire, 180-crank degrees away -- making the delta larger, not smaller. Compound this with the extra heat... and this is why turbocharged Fours don't last all that long in HD hauling or climbing applications -- they have to be spinning pretty fast for those deltas not to catch up with you.

Toyota's V8s used to be loafing at their purpose for being. This new turbo V6 isn't going to inherit the legacy of Toyota V8s, for many reasons but for this discussion, due to this focus on short-term-gain on emissions, at the cost of being far less reliable and long-lived for the people buying 4WD trucks. It's better than making a Four do Tundra work... but only going to get worse before petrol ICEs are phased out entirely.

 

FOMOCO and RAM both cried "Not in the face!" a couple of years ago...and promised to kill off the V8s.
GM has quietly kept 5.3-liter and 6.2-liter V8s in their lineups.

Markets do respond.....

 

And it's nice that these LS-based V8s are some of the best available to Everyone. Salvage yards are teeming with loads of iron- and aluminium-block versions from dead trucks and vans to pick from, up to 8.1L (496 ci) if you're lucky.

Selling ludicrous 1.2L-turbo crossies like the Envista may be off-putting to anyone wanting to merge with 3 people aboard onto the freeway w/o foot to wood (11-sec 0-60 with one 200-lb driver, when a Civic with an Atkinson-cycle 150bhp NA 2.0L, does it in 7.7), but man do their CAFE sacrifices make way for 6.2L and smaller LS V8s to stay (in every new V8 GM truck and Corvette, plus the 5.5L flat-plane-crank one in baller-spec Corvettes).

 

Customers saw the V8 and thought "8 is better than 4 or 6." But that's not the point. The benefit of a V8 (at least that of a cross-plane crank V8) is it has the engine balance of an inline 6 cylinder but is about as long as a 4 cylinder. Today we can get around a 4 cylinder's secondary imbalance making the V8 obsolete. We can even reduce the vibrations from a 3 cylinder enough to make that feasible.

 

I don't believe the number of cylinders changed the longevity of those engines. There are plenty of 6-cylinder and 4-cylinder engines with plenty of power that have extremely long-life track records. Most of the million-mile engines that I'm familiar with were 6-cylinder, not V8s.

The problem is that now we have computer simulations that attempt to design parts that last at least as long as it takes to keep customers happy while at the same time costing as little as possible. In the 80's and 90's everything was overbuilt and sometimes lasted seemingly forever as a result.

 

It may help to understand that the Japanese government desired that status, and worked to cultivate it.

Taxes on automobile registrations are relatively cheap for new cars in Japan, and then they rise after a few years. They get to be rather extortionate on older cars. If you see someone in Japan driving around in a 15 year old car, know that they paid through the nose to hang on to that relic.

Why?

They wanted to have extremely low pollution from auto emissions.
They wanted the best road safety.
They wanted to stimulate and support their domestic auto-manufacturing industries.

So the tax structure is very deliberately stacked to encourage short first ownerships. Then those cars are shipped overseas, which has created very large markets for gently used Japanese cars all over the far east.

Think about how little maintenance the average modern Japanese car actually needs- especially when operated on an island by people with relatively low personal mileage needs: They aren't exactly skipping out on very much. Those cars are still in fantastic condition.

 

Of course. But they don't have to take an engine designed to output 100 hp and make it into a 400 hp engine. There are 6 cylinder engines designed to produce 400 hp or more designed from the ground up.

Cylinder count has very little to do with power output. You can make the cylinders bigger, for an example. There are V8s designed to output 100hp and turning those into 400 hp engines would also affect their longevity.

 

Back to the OP on disposable cars, I felt that was going to be the outcome of fuel cell cars, at least the hydrogen fueled ones. PEM fuel cells were losing output faster than ICEs over time. Then the very high pressure vessel that is the fuel tank had a set lifespan. The maintenance and replacement costs might be something acceptable for commercial vehicles. They won't be for most private car owners.

 

probably why it wouldn't have passed muster for most buyers, even ignoring the infrastructure issues and meager range and power density. At least when one hasn't been gaslit (hurr-hurr) about practical limitations of fuel cells, no one would've bought one if it only lasted 4 MYs before you had to buy another. Or lease... would probably be the sugar for the medicine.

 

I talked with a tech who was issued an H vehicle - either in Nawluns or Mobile - don't remember which turf.
I'm thinking it was not the Honda CR-V e:FCEV or Mirai because he complained about a 200 mile tank range and a longish amount of time to load fuel - and I'm thinking that I read that the car FCEVs were easier to refuel.

It worked out well for him.
AT$T is pretty famous for keeping their fleet vehicles until they are well past their economic lifespan - and he got another car after only a year or two.
I have the second newest vehicle in our group and it's 6 years old and rapidly closing in on 100k.
It was a manager's car for a few years - otherwise it would already be well over 200K.

Face it.....todays cars even the 'crappy' domestics are not very 'disposable' as I understand the meaning of the word.

 

It's all perspective. To me cars ARE disposable items like toilet paper. Use them a while then get rid of them. Some brands last a little longer, some brands have a higher operating cost (read cost of ownership). Using a $100 bill to wipe your @ss doesn't make it any better than two-ply Cottonelle.

 

That's fair enough but for some people cars are a little bit more than the sum of its parts.
I include myself in that group.

Think about it.
GM used to run an ad campaign that went something like:
"It's not just a car, it's your freedom!"
That thought has provoked divided sentiments since long before those 35+ year old ads were first published.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1989/01/22/ - under the hood the depths of ignorance

Henry Ford.
A man with, literally, an 8th grade education.
Industrialist. Business Magnate. Granted well over 100 patents.
Inventor of......nothing.
Credited with being a genius AND dull witted - depending on what YOU see in the ink blot.
(The story of his first quadracycle not fitting through the shed's doorway is not made up!)
Probable racist, misogynist, somewhat ineffective strike breaker.
Proven eugenicist and antisemite - although the latter prejudice is still widely accepted even today!
Admirer of Hitler.
The REAL one....not the greatly diluted one that idiots point to today.

Although it's impossible to discern whether or not it's HIS original thought, Henry Ford is credited (or blamed) for the following quote:
"I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."

People today have no idea how democratizing that is - or that now almost any person that can enjoy the autonomy of individual transportation.
That's right - poor people now drive too.
EVEN some of the most wild-eyed leftists, hopelessly captured by the "Outrage Industrial Complex" will quail at the thought of 'Big Brother' tracking their automobile - or depriving them of the ability (freedom) to travel, although unlike SOME FREEDOMS, this RIGHT is unenumerated.......and thus unprotected by phrases like SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.........

I've said often in this forum that one of the forks in human development might result in cars being more antonymous.....and people less so.

Your first clue will be the absence or presence of things like throttle and steering in YOUR car.
OR perhaps whether or not somebody can remotely disable YOUR car......or just monitor where YOU are going in it........

 

You aren't passing that toilet paper along to someone else once you're done with it. Meanwhile, a new car isn't going to the scrap yard after 3 to 5 years because the first owner is done with it. Neither is it crushed cause it needs new tires or brakes.

Razors are the better bathroom item analogy. Cars are like safety and cartridge razors. The costs to keep using the razor vary between models, but when the person is done with either, another person can keep using them. When talking disposable cars, it means like a disposable razor where the entire thing is thrown out after one person uses it.

 

In a land of disposable everything, I guess I'm still old-school.....just fix it!

In late April, my old Toro front-wheel drive lawn mower decided not to drive, anymore, and was running pretty bad (surging and being hard to start, even after being warmed up) so I did some research and picked up a new Toro rear-wheel drive Max Recycler with the Smart Stow, which his pretty handy in my small shed. I wanted the model that allows you to keep it running but shuts off the blade, to make dumping out the bag faster, but that model looks to be very popular and Toro didn't even offer it on their website and no Colorado dealer had one in stock (or many other models...I ended up buying the thing from a Lowes that only had 2 left in stock.)

Anyway, the old lawn mower was sitting there so I figure why not learn about working on small engines? Downloaded the schematics and ordered a new carb, drive belt, traction cable, air filter, and blade. Spent a few weekends tinkering and she ended up running like new. But she doesn't fit in my shed so listed her on Facebook Marketplace for $125 and got 6 guys asking about her...one offered me $80 sight unseen and a few wanted to look at her so I got a guy over yesterday who check her out and offered me $120 cash. (Maybe I should've asked for more? But glad she's not going to the landfill.) I have a bad back so the idea of bending way down to work on the thing wasn't desirable so got her up on my Quick Jack and raised her up about 4-feet....much better height!