Hi All,

I personally love old cars, they have personality-character. But in stock form the performance and economy of most old cars is dismal and they need much more attention in the maintenance department. But lets face it they're just plain cool.

Now as much as newer cars for the masses (excluding high end models of course) are ok and a bit bland and some have ZERO personality, you can't beat the better reliability and economy of them and ideally the less hassles of maintenance.

I worked as an automotive engineer for a couple tier one suppliers to Ford, GM, Toyota etc, and I know it's cut throat competition in the worst way. However, I have to object to the absolute rubbish in quality that I'm seeing.

Case in point, we have a 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis. We had it since it was just a couple years old with 40,000 miles on the clock. It's 10 years old now, and it's been been really reliable with just a few niggles over the years (power window regulators mainly and the electric blend door motor).

But recently it started loosing coolant rather hastily under the bonnet. The "Plastic" intake manifold just gave up, it thermal cycled one to many times and has sooooooo many cracks in it, it was beyond ridiculous for a car that's just turned 10 years old. It has cracks in the intake runners as well. And 1/3rd of the electrical connectors broke while just trying to gingerly uncouple them. They're were brittle like fine hand blown glass.

I think most of us are pretty familiar with Dorman products, they typically either sell the most common parts that fail often and try to make improvements on them so that their product might last longer than the OEM's.

But just how bad does an entire intake manifold have to be for Dorman to sell the whole thing?!?!?!

I think the bigger question is WHY is it plastic. We also have a 1993 Grand Marquis, same engine, but it's an all metal intake and surprise surprise I've never had any problems with it.

Maybe I'm just middle aged and getting cranky, lol, but I'm tired of seeing cheap disposable items that just don't last. Especially when it's a high dollar item like a newer car.

What's more amusing is you see people getting their knickers in a twist over carbon footprints and other eco propaganda and they have absolutely no clue about how much energy it takes just to build one new car.

When we bought one of the 1966 galaxies that had been sitting in an open field since the early 70's with a shattered window (yeah imagine that interior). Just to get it started after baking in the hot desert sun for nearly 40 years, it took cleaning the plugs, oiling the cylinders, rebuilding the carb and a Jerry can of gas on the fuel pump inlet. Not only did it hold it's drink, as in the block, radiator and water pump actually pressurized and not one drop leaked (which surprised me if I'm honest), it ran and idled beautifully. It actually drove and shifted normally too.

I've never witnessed an old abandoned derelict with minimal tinkering wanting to live again so badly.

It's amazing how overbuilt the older cars are and how underbuilt the newer ones are.

Me personally, I think the perfect car is an older one with a slapdash of newer technology here and there. Oh and a cup holder wouldn't go amiss either

Enjoy your old cars

The (2004 Marguis) needed a new blend door servo 2 years ago. The part was only 40 dollars at the local store. But the entire dash had to be removed, and in order for me to lift it, I had to make it lite as possible so everything had to come out of it first.

I wasn't exactly chuffed when I researched what I had to do to get to it.

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