What's the oldest car you saw on the road today?

Wibbs wrote: »

When I was growing up in the 70's and 80's a 5 year old car was already old and a 10 year old car was positively fossilised. Today you see a LOT of 5 and 10 year old cars on the roads. In most peoples heads an 03 reg is not that old, but it's a decade old.

When you start looking... Damn this thread. On my short enough paper run earlier today, I was glued to reg plates. Didn't see anything pre 90's save for the 85 Capri laser I mentioned earlier, but there are an awful lot of 00 to 05 cars out there that are trundling along fine. I was thinking though maybe that is a "boom" thing? That people upgraded during those years, but since the downturn maybe haven't because of finances?

Still, again,going back to my youth in the slightly earlier days of horseless carriages cars, cars have become incredibly reliable by comparison to the past. Outside of some Merc and Volvo models that couldn't be killed short of a direct missile strike(and even then the Volvo...) your average car was generally a collection of parts trying to make it's way to the scrapyard. They recycled themselves . Before the Japanese got involved the average driver was a petrolhead almost by necessity and got their hands on the oily bits way more than the average person today. Then the Japanese did get involved and my god I don't need to take a file to my points every few weeks. However after a couple of rainstorms your car would often become Toyko Rusty Red, even if you had ordered and received Midnight blue from the dealer. :eek::)

For my mind anyway I suspect that the period just after the need to take grease to your trunions and just before the cars became mobile computer networks may well be the sweet spot for longevity. I'd near bet that in classic car meets in 2050 there'll be more 1995 cars than 2015 cars still driving in a near original state.