[masraum]

I've certainly been wondering about this topic myself for a while.

I don't necessarily rue the advent of a lot of the new safety features. I enjoy my '08 Boxster, I would still love an '88 911, and I'd be happy to have a '68 911, but some of the features on my wife's '18 Outback are pretty nice. Her adaptive cruise is pretty cool. The lane nanny is OK too.

When that stuff starts breaking, as long as you can just "not use it" fine (assuming at some point you don't want to get it fixed). But what really has me wondering is stuff like the electronic differentials, 4 wheel steering, computerized transmissions, auto stop/start, and some of the other stuff that seems like it could seriously degrade/hamper or completely kill the drivability of a vehicle.

Motors grenading, that's not a function of "new and complicated" that's always been a thing and could be a thing in any age. Yes, obviously, "interference" engines are more of a problem, and that's more common these days, but that's probably only due to the anemic personality of most vehicles from the early 70s through the 80s/90s that had super low compression, low power, low octane engines.

But then a modern automatic trans is light years ahead of the automatics from the 70s, so are we really complaining about that? Yeah, a manual is a manual is a manual. They are fun and engaging and my preference 99% of the time, but I understand that's not always the case for everyone.

I don't like the auto stop/start (neither of our cars have it, but I've driven 2-3 that do). But the feature does save gas. No, if your car does it, you're not going to double your fuel economy, but by putting it on all cars, my guess is that tens of thousands of gallons of gas can/will be saved over the course of a year, maybe more.