Modern Cars Are Amazing

shadowman

2014-05-23 10:17:00 UTC

At the risk of inviting rage from the angry brigade who think cars are cages it occurred to me on the way to work this morning just how amazing modern cars are.

I have mostly owned large petrol engine cars (usually BM’s), buying them when 5 or 6 years old and driving them to death which happens at well over 200K miles. More recently I decided to try a different strategy and leased a diesel golf with 175 HP, loads of torque and which was shiny new when delivered.

The car has now done 40K miles. I drive quite fast (80–100 on the motorway and sporty but not stupid on other roads) and in that time it’s averaging over 45 MPG. Although now illegal and needing replacement at the front it’s still on its first set of tyres and it has required zero fault maintenance of any kind. It asked for one service which was about £200 and will probably need another one soon at about the same cost. Despite my having small children and all the chaos that brings noting inside or out has broken, nothing rattles and it has carried endless cases, climbing gear and pulled a bike trailer all without complaint.

The saving on monthly fuel cost more or less covers the lease payment and the BM’s would routinely cost me 5K+ a year in maintenance on top of that. I am astonished how good modern cars are as utility machines. Mine has the GTI suspension etc so it’s even mildly amusing to drive. 40K of faultless maintenance free miles doing everything asked of it for about £250 a month. The human is a clever monkey indeed creating all this from sand and ore, powering it with rotten organic matter and creating a financial system that delivers it all at modest cost.

That is all