Were the old cars that great or that bad?

 I like old cars. I like fixing up old cars, driving them, the looks you get, and if you are at all a do-it yourselfer the economics of driving them. That said I don't own one right now. I drive a mid-2000s American fullsize car which I just paid off the loan on.

 I don't have a good place to store or work on old cars right now. I work a fair number of hours and I have other priorities, and I am content with the late model (to me) car I drive. Aside from routine maintenance I am at the mercy of car mechanics, which I am not happy with, but since the new cars don't  need that much work I can live with it.

 Some people think everything was way better in the old days. Some aspects of the old cars were definitely better, but in a lot of ways, the new ones have them beat all to hell. The new cars, when they break, are tougher to fix physically, and usually it's a matter of parts replacement. Very little fitting and setup are needed, and if you can't get THE part, you are in big trouble.

 The mechanics of Cuba famously keep the 1950s cars running there. There is no way they could do that with the modern ones. But the Cubans don't drive a lot, because they can't get much gas, and the cars are full of what we used to hear my dad call Negro League engineering. If you had to pay American labor rates to have that done not only would it be cheaper to buy a new Ferrari, but the car would not be satisfactory to any decent car person. A friend of mine, a German, was in Cuba years ago and he told me how they manage to keep old Chevies running with Lada carburetors and diesel truck valves and fuel lines from crashed MiGs. I hate to think what they do now that the Russians are gone.

 What most people do not realize is that a very substantial part of the cost of new cars is regulatory compliance. The new emissions standards are unbelievably tough and meeting them costs a LOT of money. Same with the air bags and ABS and TPS and whatnot everyone HAS to have by federal law..

 You can buy a new car in some foreign countries for half of the US price. It has no compliance costs for emissions or safety because those markets don't have any such rules.

Unquestionably, this can be taken to extremes, such as the Eastern European markets where 70s Fiats are still in production with untempered, unlaminated glass and so forth. But the safety and environmental law changes we have had since the 80s have only a marginal effect on safety at probably a 30% cost increase to the overall car.

 Another unintended consequence of making everyone have ABS and air bags and the rest of the crap we have to have is that now everyone drives as though they are invincibly protected, that is to say, like a jackass. In the old cars you KNEW you could get hurt and badly, and most people drove more sanely.