• orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
    20·
    9 days ago

    I love my manual 2015 Fit. Over 212k miles and still going strong. I bought it a few months ago. 1 owner before me. Had to put a little work into it but it was all general maintenance stuff (brakes and a bad fuel injector). Not quite 20 years old but still.

    • caurvo@aussie.zone
      5·
      8 days ago

      Yellow hatchback club 💛

      I bought a 2014 Swift Sport but the CVT had too much distance and was clearly a time bomb. Moved it on but loved driving a non-monochrome car so much, I ended up with a slightly newer model with a normal torque converter (ZC33S) and still in yellow at 1/6th the distance.

      • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
        4·
        8 days ago

        I’ve always heard CVTs were a bit of a gamble. The manual was a challenge to find, but the upside was that most people were looking for automatics anyway, so the few manuals I found weren’t getting a ton of clicks. I was originally looking to get a Civic hatchback, but they were too old and there were too many half-baked project cars.

        Those Swift hatchbacks are killer! I love Suzukis. My friend in high school had one of those little 90s Vitaras. We would ride to the beach in it to go surfing. So much fun to whip around town in.

        My wife and I are both all in on the anti-monochrome club. Our other vehicle is a 2021 Kia Sorento turbo AWD in sapphire blue. The colors compliment each other nicely in the driveway 😂

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      8 days ago

      The fit is gaining a lot of popularity as of late

      Is it any good in the snow? I think it might be dangerous in the winter due to it being lightweight

      • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        8 days ago

        lightweight cars are fine in the winter. just get snow tires and drive well

        source: drove a Tercel in the winter for years, did it later on with a Yaris as well

        I dislike heavier cars because they have so much more momentum. hard to change direction with little traction and you run into things with more energy. little cars you can just spin the wheels, find some traction, and go where you’re pointing.

      • Sailing7@lemmy.ml
        3·
        8 days ago

        Agree to the other guy next to me. Light cars are no bad in snow. Just wear winter tires. No all season crap.

        And actually lighter cars sometimes are even better in the snow. They usually have thinner tires as for example a heavy suv. More pressure on thinner area. More space for snow and walter to flee towards.

        Also because of the heavy weight of suvs and such such heavy cars are more likely to slidder. Just imagine a wet floor in a shop. Now imagine yourself as a kid sliding over it and how far you would go. Now imagine the same as an full grown adult - but with the same speed. You will go further. Wayy further.

        Also if you have suuuper much snow under your tires - lets say you slided and went off the road into a field that has tons of snow.

        Your small car wont weigh down in the snow that much. Making it not sink that much. Wich makes the chance higher that you will be able to recover/drive back to the road by yourself higher.

        All around lighter car? Better for winter.

    • Logarrhythmia@lemmy.world
      3·
      8 days ago

      Just did a road trip in the same generation jazz, because my 25 year old car shit the bed on the day of departure. Great little car, that is deceptively spacious. Although that 1.3L engine with 3 of us in the car really struggled sometimes, especially on mountain passes.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    18·
    8 days ago

    I love the styling cars had circa 2000. This whole “let’s make cars look like futuristic tanks” thing lately is not it

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      5·
      8 days ago

      I blame ford pickup trucks for that. Did you keep getting bigger and the front end keeps getting flatter. Eventually they’re going to be so high up you’ll be able to run over small trees without noticing.

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
      7·
      8 days ago

      Crap, the time between when the moon landing happened and when I was born (late 80s), is smaller than the gap between 9/11 and today.

      And it always will be, by an ever-widening margin.

      … I think I gotta lie down

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      3·
      8 days ago

      For me anything with 19’ in it is a long time ago. It was the time I was a kid, still growing up, and that’s seems so long ago.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
    16·
    9 days ago

    I drive a car from the early 2000’s. When I got it I was stoked to finally have a car made in this century. It turns 20 in 2 years 😬

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
    9·
    9 days ago

    awhile back i saw a toyota prius hybrid with ‘collector’ plates that are used by classic and antique car owners (and cheapskates that want the cheaper plates in exchange for some use limits).

  • cro_magnon_gilf@sopuli.xyz
    91·
    8 days ago

    Cars used to be made to get you somewhere. Now they cost 4 times as much and are full of government-mandated surveillance equipment and random gadgets that are expensive to fix when they break. And they’re twice as heavy.

    The only thing that’s gotten better is safety.

    I miss when cars were cars

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      8 days ago

      Honesty the best era for cars is around 2003-2016 depending on the manufacturer. The older ones from around 2008 or so are especially good.

    • sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip
      21·
      8 days ago

      Now they cost 4 times as much

      Pricing on cars with similar features and performance have been going up slower than general inflation, but as you mention they keep increasing the features/performance of the base models.

      When I was really getting into cars in the 90’s, it seemed like the base models of economy brands were pretty barebones. But over time what previously was optional became standard: air conditioning, automatic transmission, power locks/windows, floor mats, a decent car stereo, cruise control, etc.

      And the things that used to differentiate luxury brands/models just became standard over time: traction control, good acceleration/handling, clear coat over the paint, rust resistance. In the 90’s, it was still possible to buy a vehicle that took more than 10 seconds to accelerate to 60mph (~100km/h).

      And of course, a bunch of safety stuff became standard in large part because of regulation: airbags, anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, backup cameras. And fuel efficiency has gotten much better on the engineering side, for any given level of performance and vehicle weight. Emissions have similarly improved by regulation.

      So cars have gotten so much better, while basically getting more expensive slightly slower than general inflation. So it’s hard to compare apples to apples between decades.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      8·
      9 days ago

      Get one while you still can, they haven’t been going down in price for a long time and may in fact already be going up in price. They’re pretty iconic, but not as many on the roads these days.

    • vorpuni@tarte.nuage-libre.frFrançais
      8·
      9 days ago

      My experience with such old cars, where their age is starting to make full restoration advisable:

      • mechanically reliable and simple to fix (and critical parts are usually available, quality varies)
      • everything electrical is shit (and old), you need to go through everything to check the connections, completely rotten through ground wires aren’t necessarily visible and will cause endless pain until you find them
      • the rust-proofing wasn’t great but it was there so usually if they’re still alive by now they just need the usual spots where those models rust checked before purchase and/or crash damage thoroughly checked
      • crash safety is nonexistent, ABS and ESP aren’t that useful if you learned how to drive without, if you rely on ESP, better learn not to
      • the fastest affordable cars from the 1980s are slower than family cars from the 2020s, still feels like you’re going way faster
      • if you buy something predating catalytic converters in your country, be prepared for it to smell atrocious
      • carburettors that haven’t been tampered with and aren’t leaking don’t need to be touched unless they malfunction, if they malfunction they usually only need a good scrubbing with diesel then a wash in petrol, replacement of extremely dead gaskets, and the jets usually need a clean, the tiny drill bits for carburettor jets can be used for cleaning if you use the size just below the marked size. Ultrasonic cleaners aren’t necessary, replacing all gaskets usually means it’s going to leak more than before.
      • EFI was shit until the 1990s, avoid it if you can
    • I'm Hiding 🇦🇺@aussie.zone
      3·
      8 days ago

      I daily drive one. I love it to bits but it’s been through three engines and gearboxes, four coils, two carburettors, and two distributors in the last 70,000kms and I still have a niggling ignition fault and can’t get the mixture quite perfect.

      As I’ve been through all these faults I’ve slowly been doing more and more of the work myself as I don’t trust “specialist” shops to put the time and care into my job to do it right, and as a result the car is a lot better now than when I bought it. But its a lot of work.

      In short, buy a 40 year old Japanese car, not a British one!

    • real_squids@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      It’s a mk2 Golf, if you want a cooler one - there’s a Cross Country variant that’s a lifted 4x4, or if you’re super lucky - get a Rallye version, it’s a homologation special