[s-cars] Luddites? Or just Troglodytes?

[Ian Duff]

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What a bunch of whiners.

Remember back in the early to mid 70's, when  emission controls  
arrived? We went from 400+ hp muscle cars of the late 60's to  
"muscle" cars with less than 200hp. Fast forward to today, and the  
advance of technology, and we have cars puking fewer emissions,  
sucking less gas, and seeing 500hp or more.

How about back to the 50's, when the prototype for the Abrams M1A1  
was released as a 55 Caddy? Now we have cars with way more comfort,  
almost as much space, weighing somewhat less, sometimes on the order  
of a whole ton less.

The technology pendulum is always swinging, seems right now it's  
swinging toward stuffing as much cool stuff into cars as possible,  
perhaps waiting for the reliability factor to catch up.

Maybe not. Who can remember Back In The Day, shade tree wrenching on  
your first beater? Seems I was always fixing something on my first  
car. On reflection, the things that I was fixing at 70K miles on that  
old 72 Capri have never broken on any of my recent 100K-plus cars,  
and the stuff on my recent cars that does break is far easier to fix,  
mostly the result of my access to technology.

This whining about too much technology is pretty short-sighted. Can  
you say S-Cars list, ETKA, VAG-COM, Bentley? With these four  
technology-enabled tools, our complex, sophisticated, aging cars are  
not that hard to fix. Even when what breaks is the technology.

What technology was available when the S4 was first released? Those  
owners of say a 5KTQ were likely as horrified about the onslaught of  
technology in the AAN and S4 as you are whining about now. When the  
RS6 comes off lease in a few years, my bet is that we will be better  
equipped to live with keeping it running than we are today, just as  
we are keeping the complex S4 and S6 running now, 10 plus years on.

I think the single most difficult factor influencing any decision  
about purchasing a new car for me is the frickin' dealer. Sure,  
JDPowers might say something about reliability, but even WMB or  
Mercyless Benz, two paragons of bling and status that have less than  
stellar reliability reputations of late are not that bad if you have  
a good dealer.

Do you all want to be driving Camrys or Accords or some other Maytag  
with wheels? Not me. I hope VAG, WMB, Mercyless Benz, Ovlov, Alfa,  
Porch, etc, keep pushing the envelope.

- -Ian Duff.

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