Classic Cars

Being Happy about New In-CAR-nations

with Bob Gelber

Have you noticed that whenever you're late for an appointment you always hit every red traffic light and slow traffic? When you have all the time in the world, on the same road, the lights always seem to be with you and traffic is light. Why is it that every time something breaks in your car, or in your home, it's always on a weekend? Before the electronic toll e-pass, do you remember always dropping part of the change you've been clutching in your hand just as you pull up to the toll booth? What about your habit of seriously speeding in your high performance car and getting away with it? However, the next day you get a ticket for doing 45 in a 35 mph zone. If any of these events have happened to you, welcome to the world of Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

New cars suffer much less from Murphy's Law than older models. The most fantastic advancement in new car technology is not fuel injection, disc brakes or radial tires, it's the remote electronic locking and door opening key. It's sort of a garage door opener for car doors. It wasn't that long ago that in the winter, when it was below freezing and had rained or snowed, the door locks on your car would freeze solid. You couldn't even get a car key in the door lock. The solution was to hold a lit match under the key, heat it up and then rapidly force it into the frozen door lock. Sounds simple, but try to do it when it's snowing, 15 degrees, and the wind is howling.

Speaking of lousy weather situations, new cars have windshield wipers that are far superior to the wipers of older cars. SUVs even have a windshield wiper for the back window, a simple idea that was pioneered by Volvo for its 1960s 240 DL station wagon. When the rear wiper first appeared on the Volvo, it was quite a novelty and the butt of many jokes. "Does a Volvo go that fast in reverse?" All '40s, '50s and '60s model American and foreign cars had windshield wipers that were mounted on flimsy chrome plated narrow wiper arms. The wiper blades were delicate narrow strips of rubber that didn't work very well. I was always impressed by the three wiper blades on the front windshield of the 1960s Jaguar XKE, but my years of experience with XKEs proved that those three wipers weren't worth a damn in a downpour. When you finally shut them off, at least one of them would jump over the windshield surround and scratch the car. What was wrong with British car manufacturers in those days? All it does is rain over there, and one would think that England would be the country to master the way to make a proper windshield wiper.

Today's cars all have relatively hefty windshield wipers that do a pretty good job. I even like the optional equipment headlight washers on some models. Although overkill and a little silly, they can come in handy in a blizzard at night when your headlights are getting caked over with road slime. Another thought, why is it you always seem to run out of windshield washer fluid when you need it most? The windshield wiper has been with us since the dawn of the automobile, and the concept is really dated. Isn't it time for a new way to clean one's windshield?

It used to be a real pain in the neck just to get older cars started on a seriously cold morning. Now, with a bank of computers on board and fuel injection, all one has to do is just turn the key and the car starts every time, all the time. Not to long ago, say 15 or 20 years when most cars had carburetors and chokes, even a good running car would act up on a cold morning. There were all sorts of things drivers had to know. Pump the gas once to set the automatic choke. If the car didn't start within five or six engine turnovers, you had to wait a few seconds and try all over again. Then there was the dreaded flooded engine, a situation caused either by a bad choke or pumping the accelerator pedal too much. One had to have a talented right foot just to get a car started. If you tried too hard to start it, your battery would go dead. Always a joyous event for a hapless, ice cold car owner.

So it's pretty obvious that today's cars are much more dependable than cars of the past and they should be. However, cars are still machines and will need service and repair over time. Most of the things that breakdown in new cars are electronic and not mechanical. Remember even the advanced computer "Hal" in Stanley Kubrick's 2001- A Space Odyssey wouldn't open the pod door on command. Everyone is driving some really good equipment today, so drive safely with all the ice and snow around and watch out for Murphy.

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com.

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