Clarkson’s Right

By
eric
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53
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Top Gear frontman Jeremy Clarkson is right: Modern cars are “all shit now.” But he didn’t explain exactly why, so I’ll try.

It is not because they aren’t powerful or because they are slow, because they are neither of those things. A new Prius hybrid gets to 60 more quickly than 80 percent of the V8 powered muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s and goes 4-5 times as far on a gallon of gas.

That’s not shitty.

The shitty part is how lifeless modern cars are to drive and how fundamentally disposable they are. Ironically, much of the former has to do with purging the “shit” from cars. There was a time when cars  were not reliable – and were more difficult to drive in that they required more skill and attention to drive. This is what gave them life, as Clarkson remembers – and so do I.

Maybe you do, too.

I have owned many shitty – by modern standards – cars over the years. Among them the ’74 VW Beetle I drove to work and back in the early ’90s, just after college. I remember the Exxon gas card I used to keep in the glovebox, to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield during the winter. And the rag I used to keep in the same place, to wipe off the fog from the inside of the glass in the summer, when it rained and the interior became a kind of mobile sauna.

I also once owned a ’78 Camaro with T-tops that leaked so badly I just kept them in the trunk most of the time. The seats were damp and the floors rusty but the drive was always fun.

In high school I had a buddy who drove a shitty old Pontiac LeMans, painted shit metallic brown with a white vinyl roof that was delaminating from the rust underneath. If you turned off the engine and kept the gas pedal floored, you could get the engine to “diesel” for as long as the laughs lasted.

Another buddy had an old Datsun B210. This was before Datsun became Nissan and anyhow, it was a piece of shit, as we all agreed. Reverse was gone so to back the little Datsun up, we would open the doors and push it back.

Just a few quick stories and that’s just the point I am trying to make on Clarkson’s behalf. No one has stories about modern cars – because they are shit. Just in a different sense. All the life has been sucked out of them. Even – especially – the exotics, about which I’ve written before. Such as the current Corvette as a for-instance. It is – by far – the quickest and most powerful, best-handling Corvette ever. It is also shit in that it is as exciting to drive it as it is to ride a high-speed elevator.

By which I mean it is not much different to drive it than it is to drive any other exotic. They are all blindingly quick and have handling capabilities far beyond the driving capabilities of 99 percent of drivers, which is exactly why they are shit – in that there is no challenge. You are not pushing your limits in a new Corvette. The Jesus Christ! element is just not there – as it was back in the ’80s, when I was behind the wheel of my high school buddy’s 1971 Plymouth GTX 440 and we were racing a then-new Corvette. It was neck and neck until about 130 MPH, at which point I felt the GTX’s steering (if you want to call it that) getting really light as air began to lift the car’s front end. That’s the kind of shit you do not experience anymore.

But it’s an experience I will never forget.

It is easy to forget pretty much any car made since the late 1990s, when all the shit – or at least, most of it – was drained away. They became not-shit, in all the tangible ways but because they had been rendered largely shit-free, they had become appliances and no one remembers what make or model toaster they last had, before they threw it away to get another one.

Many of us had this love-hate relationship with the shit cars we once owned and this was a dynamic very much like the dynamic one experiences with a girlfriend or ex-wife that was high-maintenance or a drama queen as opposed to the placid domesticity of a Stepford Wife, which is another way to think about the shit modern cars have become. There are no surprises and so not much fun. What are we going to watch on TV tonight, hon?

I think that may have been what Clarkson was trying to say.

And few ever said it better than he did.

. . .

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53 COMMENTS

  1. I’m a glutton for punishment, having driven VWs all my life but talk about adventure! I do have stories. We still have a 1972 Beetle. When I need a new battery in the Beetle I go change it myself. My stepson changed the batteries (!) on the 2019 Chrysler Pacifica. Weird things started happening because I guess we didn’t “reset” something. Completely stupid. Now I can’t turn off the ASS; when we first bought it from the Braunability dealer it was turned off and not bothering us. Now I have to disable it every time I go to drive my husband somewhere. I’m sticking with the old VWs and our Dodge Cummins; only drive the Pacifica when my husband has to get somewhere such as the doctor, etc. He’s working on getting stronger so he can get back into his 2002 GMC 1500; plain Jane, no nanny stuff, V8, even gets decent gas mileage.

    • Hi Jetta,

      Yup! About a year ago, I had a brand-new Dodge Hornet press car that would not start one morning (I get the cars for a week at a time). So I checked the battery’s voltage and it was down to about 11 volts. Stupid me, I took the battery out to trickle charge it on my work bench. When I reinstalled it, the car went berserk. Horns, lights – everything but the engine, which would not start. The Hornet had to be flat-bedded to the dealer to “reboot.”

  2. Power train wise, modern cars reached the state of the art. The power that modern engines in premium cars can deliver is more than what exotic cars used to sport when I was a lad. The handling, thanks to sophisticated suspensions and modern tires, is assuring and allows much fun without many brown moments. The interiors are more well appointed and much more durable. I still hesitate about the abundance of electronic systems, but they outlasted my ownership. I’m actually quite ok with modern cars. I don’t really miss spending Saturdays getting my hands dirty with grease and oil. But I really draw the line at driving aids that interfere with steering, accelerating and braking. Only a few models allow them to be switched off and fewer yet across start up cycles. In this regard, the vast majority is 💩.

    • Hi Augustine,

      Absolutely. We’re in decline now, but as recently as about five years ago, commonly available and affordably priced mid-sized sedans with V6 engines such as the Camry and Accord were quicker, faster and better handling than Corvettes of the ’80s While getting much better gas mileage and being far more reliable. Heck, you used to be able to buy smallish crossovers such as the RAV4 with a V6 – and a manual transmission!

      That’s changing, though. Engine size/power and performance are declining – and unreliability is increasing again, due to overteched systems and gratuitous complexity.

  3. can’t get parts for newer vehicles

    dad’s old lincoln town car has been in the shop for months.

    leak blew the computer modules that control power locks & power seats.

    my independent mechanic is still trying to source used parts, ’cause there ain’t any new ones that can be found.

    kid suggested swapping in a manual seat from a crown vic!

  4. 70’s cars were pretty crappy, though at least still real.
    By the mid 80’s cars had mostly already become front-wheel drive boring transportation appliances minus the electronics and annoyances of today. Pretty crappy.
    And it went downhill quickly from there.

    Trucks, on the other hand, seemed to be getting better for a while. 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and early 00’s were a good time for trucks. Then they went quickly south too.

    It’s not just vehicles either.

    Although I like and use MP3s, I have to say that many of my best music memories are from 40 years ago, listening to crappy portable cassette players! I could actually tolerate radio back then, and it was kinda neat turning it on and scanning around and never klnowing what you’d come across.

    Black & white TVs (There were actually some good shows worth watching, so you didn’t care about such things as picture quality because you were too busy enjoying the show.

    Toys that actually let you use your imagination, as opposed to being tied to some TV show character with a pre-determined story line, and not having screens or graphics or voices…

    Stores which catered to the mores of society around them, instead of catering to a tiny minority. Shoppers who prided themselves on looking nice when they went out in public and who behaved politely.

    This is getting really depressing, realizing how crappy everything is, and how we once had it so good.

  5. Picture it: you’re 20 years old again, taking Econ 101, trying to pay attention to the content rather than ogling the coeds. The eminent professor asks: what are the two most cyclical sectors of the economy?

    *raises hand* ‘Autos and housing!’ The professor in his tweed jacket smiles and nods. ‘Care to expand on that, young man?’

    ‘Yes, Doctor Bernanke. Housing starts minus housing completions have plummeted to the lowest level since nineteen-freaking-eighty. The pipeline is emptying out. Have you seen the chart?’

    https://tinyurl.com/2k7yhn79

    ‘Interesting,’ muses Dr B. ‘And what of autos?’

    ‘Seemingly every week, Herr Professor, these low-growth, mature-industry dinosaurs lower their sales and earnings projections. I FEAR THE WORST!’

    *turns to attractive coed across the aisle*

    Hey, what’s your name?
    How old are you?
    Where’d you go to school?
    Uh-huh, yeah?

    Well, now that we know each other a little bit BETTER
    WHY DON’T YOU JUST COME OVER HERE
    Make me feel all right!

    — The Doors, Gloria [live take]

  6. Cars have become digital things. The cars used to be analog things other than having a ECU.
    Users are detatched from digital things but unbounded with analog things. (Notice how well backup cameras work compared to looking around before backing out.)
    I have all analog vehicles with one radio for AM/FM. Easier to repair than all-electric things.

  7. “Top Gear frontman Jeremy Clarkson is right:”

    Eric,
    You have to add “Former” to the beginning of that sentence. He was fired from the BBC years ago. As I’m sure you know he later did “The Grand Tour” on Amazon which just concluded with season 6 episode 1.
    But he was right about what he said as you stated.
    Signed,
    The Stig

  8. just finished doing State Inspection on a 2022 POS VUlva SUX. It always takes 15 minutes just to find all the hidden/disguised/non-existent controls for normal shit, such as defog blower, temp, etc. etc. The electronic non-shifter is asinine, misleading, and dangerous as well. Then there are the screaming alarms for shit like ‘collision alerts’. One went off on account of an effing piece of grass, a 3 foot tall weed the thickness of a broom straw, ffs!
    This uber-safety nanny-crap is obnoxious beyond all sanity!
    Beyond the State Inspection, I refuse to do any work on the late-model Euro-Trash people are driving now. EV’s are not even allowed on my lot for obvious ‘spontaneous firestorm’ issues.

    • These lithium battery rolling fire bombs are great…………..

      Reports of Electric Cars Exploding After Being Exposed to Saltwater from Hurricane Helene

      From the GP comments…

      Look up “Lithium is Dangerous” on You Tube
      A short clip showing a guy taking lithium out of a double A battery and placing it in water; There was immediate sparks, fire, explosion.

      Now compare that to a giant EV battery ! A much much bigger fire.
      In an EV the big battery is usually under the floor board just below the back seats where your kids probably sit.

      Sitting over top of a battery that emits EMF’s, can’t get it wet, may automatically combust so don’t park it in your garage, steer away from all puddling on roads when its raining, don’t run over anything like even a branch because it can ruin the battery and void the warranty, ….damage the battery case…write off…or fire/explosion….

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/electric-cars-are-exploding-after-being-exposed-saltwater/

      • Couple technical corrections. EMF is Electro Motive Force, another moniker for voltage. Batteries have them but dont emit them. EMR is Electro Magnetic Radiation which electric cars, phones, computers, etc all do emit and it is harmful to human physiology to some extent, maybe little, maybe a lot, depending on how energetic it is.

        Plenty to dislike about BEVs without messing up the facts.

  10. Wow shit cars of my youth…. man it was a fun time….. when I meet friends of that era we still joke and share our “adventure” stories.

    That said – do you think it’s modern cars or the fact that because of so much tax, insurance and regulation it makes it impossible to run for kids on a tight budget? I think of many cars from the 90s/00s which will be pretty decent pieces of shit for teenagers today. But artificial costs will never let a kid do so- like my old extremely efficient diesel 07 X3 which I keep for a second car to the station/town centre/run around. It’s not “green” enough to go into London without having to pay the gov even more, so no kid will prob ever use it as his first car……

  11. The last “fun” car I had was a 63 Nova SS convertable with a full roller valve train,and hi compression pistons along with everything else for a street racing.Built powerglide with a hi stall convertor and a narrowed 8.5″ posi set up one notch below a spool.Couldn’t drive it on wet streets as it would swap ends without any effort.It too would get the light steering around 110,had some fun times in it.

  14. Get govt out of the way, repeal CAFE and abolish the EPA (As well as the other 3/4 letter agencies), and let nature take its course.

    Also goes back to a point my friend makes, paraphrasing here, but basically “Dealer doesn’t let you order the car you want, so take it or leave it” leading to “See, no one wants a manual!”.
    Gotta go back to the whole, “I want my (Insert vehicle) with this, that and a stick”, so they can’t be like “look (manufacturer), no one wants them, so stop making them!”, thus increasing the demand.

    As far as classics, don’t have anything as I always had newish, but I remember having a few hickups with my ’07 A4 due to age and previous owner, having a clutch cylinder slave give out and having it towed, or running out of fuel on the turnpike due to my upgrade HP/LP Fuel Pumps… fun times, gotta love tuner culture

  15. They have successfully bred out masculinity from boys at an early age for decades. What do you expect from feminized faggots in regards to safety cult car designing? Designed by government rule-makers who have never successfully created anything in their coddled little lives.

    When I see an old car on the road that looks like a daily driver, 99.99% of the time it’s driven by an older man. A man from a different age. I’m one of them. I’ll drive an old car until I’m physically unable to do so.

    You should too.

    • Depends on the car, I’m still in the sports car/muscle phase of my life, although fortunately plenty of those. Good thing as well is they’re slower to uptake on new tech, so the right car is a bit more DIY friendly. Still, you’re right, just better when said older car is modded.

      What I don’t get are men with the whole “I gotta be practical” when 99% of the time its just them alone getting crossovers when they don’t even need the cargo space, or “I need AWD” when they just need good tires. Why sports cars are declining, the avg young man thinks they need a crossover and gets themselves a honda hrv or nissan rouge (spelt thusly as they ruined a good name on crap)

    • The era of cheap credit and many/most women being all in on consumerism has had lots of social consequences.
      One of those is the social implications of driving old cars in many areas of the country. Because if a man is driving an old car there must be something wrong with him.

      • “Because if a man is driving an old car there must be something wrong with him.”

        Yep. Men who are currently on the hunt are usually not going to drive an old beater. Depending on the type of chick they are going for.

        Lucky for me, I found my future wife when we were 16/17 years old. I happened to drive a beater 1975 Dodge Dart that was just like one her family had when she was a child. It was meant to be, I tell her. That was about 35 years ago.

        I once worked with a dude that said he wouldn’t date a woman with a nice car. He wanted a woman that was in need of rescue.

        • It’s also funny how financially illiterate people are these days. As I still keep an old car (all paid off) whenever I get any expenses on it (really just a couple hundred a couple times a year for things that stop working), people tell me “why dont you just trade it in and get a new one, as this is just a waste of money “!! They think it’s a better “investment” to pay hundreds monthly for close to a decade for a “new” car (which by the time its paid off will also be a piece of junk)!!

          • “They think it’s a better “investment” to pay hundreds monthly”

            So true. I don’t get the logic either. I have a brother in law who had a late model vehicle, fully paid off, that needed a transmission. He bought a new car instead, because he didn’t want to spend the money for a transmission! WTF

  16. I drove a ‘65 VW for a couple years for a couple years while in college; was the most fun to drive car I’ve ever owned, but boy it was tough in the winter. As Eric noted I needed an ice scraper for the inside of the windshield and usually couldn’t feel my toes by the time I reached my destination 😆. I wish I had that car today, f*ck the saaaaaafety cult.

  17. ‘Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW have all slashed their forecasts this month, with Aston Martin and Stellantis following suit on Monday morning. The broader picture reveals that the European auto industry has stalled.

    ‘Stellantis now projects an industrial free cash flow range of negative 5 billion to negative 10 billion euros, versus prior guidance of positive cash generation.’ — ZeroHedge

    ‘Stalled,’ hell. They are swirling down the toilet bowl, with too many gov-designed crap products and too few buyers.

    With a cheerful shower of golden rain, I urge them along on their subterranean way.

  18. I’ve not experienced it, newest car I’ve owned being a 2002 Impreza, but from what I’ve read here, my main complaint would be the car constantly arguing with you about what you should or should not be doing.

  19. You’re complaining about the wrong things. The problem is a huge population of consumers, not human customers, not men, who demand more and more of the latest thing out of simple effete boredom as they drift fecklessly through the life god gifted them.

    What we want is to live, to experience life, with all its pitfalls. They want to be sheltered from it, to be coddled and caressed until their final descent into a silk lined padded casket.

    Bah. Humbug. No fucking thanks. I’ll shift my gears, spin my tires, slide off the road because I’m pushing my limits beyond them. I’ll do the smoking hot prom queen even though I might need a shot of penicillin later. And I’ll eat steak because I like it, because that’s why cattle exist on this planet, for carnivores to eat.

    I have a collection of mechanical toys to satisfy me. I also go through a late model work beater every 6 months because they’re worn out when I get them, but mostly because I get bored with them and they suck miserably to work on.

    Point being, we’re complaining about the sorry state of humanity. When in fact all we have to do is be human.

  20. The more I read about the new cars and see how they look the less desire I have to buy one.
    It’s sad in a way to be able to afford a new car but to be so repulsed by what they have become that even the humble Edsel now has more appeal than what Detroit pumps out now.

    As for the Chevette pictured, I almost bought one but it was kind of tight for me but other than that they weren’t a horrendous car. Slow perhaps but reasonably easy to work on.

  21. In ’87 or ’88 a guy I was in the Army with a guy who got his hands on a Buick GNX (his dad worked at GM and was able to get it through employee programs).

    To this day it’s the most badass ride I’d ever been in. Consider I was driving a used Chevy Cavalier with an inline four cylinder that had less power than a lawnmower. And prior to that I had the trusted Vega Station Wagon.

    As a daily mover the GNX was impractical. I guess that was the point. It set itself apart due to the power, the design, etc.

    I’m not sure how this is relevant to Eric’s article. Just one of those random memories it inspired.

    • “In ’87 or ’88 a guy I was in the Army with got his hands on a Buick GNX (his dad worked at GM and was able to get it through employee programs).”

      Sorry. Need more caffeine.

  22. Not just cars. Just about everything has gone corporate-safe. There’s very little interesting innovation going on in the US because there are very few companies. Oh, there are lots of firms listed on the stock exchanges, but only seven make up most of the trade action and get all the press. There are lots of “small businesses” too, millions of LLC corporations. But most of them are side hustles and contractors, not businesses producing consumer goods.

    And why might that be? One might think because of information overload. Or tradition. Or perhaps, because the federal government has decided that two is enough competition. So we have two desktop operating systems, two mobile phone operating systems, two mega-conglomerate food companies, two grocery store chains, two (Oh, I mean one) hospital chain per city, two (well, 2.3) car manufacturers.

    And of course two mega-conglomerate defense contractors.

    They don’t need to innovate, just copy whatever someone in another part of the world is doing. Or buy ’em out. Venture capital firms (another very limited market) will be happy to back your startup if you can polish it up and make it a good acquisition target for a larger firm. But if you have dreams of taking on the established player… good luck with that.

    The American marketplace has become lazy in no small part because of “The System” that is very happy with the status quo. Every year like clockwork, the new model is introduced, with some new enhancement. But it gets more and more difficult to see the incremental improvement to justify the upgrade. And many of the new enhancements aren’t desirable either. But they strap them on because they have to. Otherwise you end up in a situation where you’re selling the same Dodge Charger for 15 years.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with selling a popular car for 15 years without major overhauls.

    And now that the regulators are involved, things will only get worse. We all know about the auto market, but did you know that Apple is being forced to allow Europeans to side-load apps on the iPhone because they claim Apple has a monopoly on app stores? A company with 25% of the mobile phone market somehow has a monopoly? OK. This will compromise security and lead to problems, but the regulator’s decree stands.

    • The “US” unconscious subhuman primarily builds death and destruction to export. This props up the stock exchange and backfeeds into why its so God Damned noisy the day after Sunday. Its literally driving the weekly slavery now.

      Denial is futile.

    • RK: ” So we have two desktop operating systems, ”

      After several false starts over the years to fire one of them, I have finally “all but” fired MS by installing Linux Mint (dual boot for the one or two products that just won”t run or have no equivalent in Linux). Several months in now, and will never go back. Maybe if enough do the same, the two that make me dual boot might show up in Linux versions. I think Windows 11 not running on many “experienced” computers and all its spyware may make a lot of folks take the jump. Then there is the industry trend to “can’t buy, gotta subscribe” software. I don’t mind paying a developer for his product, but I will not pay him month-after-month just to use the same bits over and over.

  23. ‘The shitty part is how lifeless modern cars are to drive.’ — eric

    ‘Lifeless’ may be too kind a word.

    Weighed down by two (or even three) tons of lard, numbed with a ten-speed compliance transmission, and festooned with electronic nannies either interfering with one’s commands or demanding one’s rapt gaze, ‘driving’ has become a dystopian ordeal. And that’s before kill switches, AEB and electric-shock prompts become mandatory.

    How auto makers expect their victims customers to pay $50K and up for their own torment and humiliation is a mystery to which they really should devote their handful of dim brain cells.

    Listen up, Lightning Jim and EeeVee Mary: I don’t want your crap products at any price, including free. Their design sucks. Their visibility sucks. They are fat, ugly and boring. Shunning them unambiguously improves one’s quality of life. You are hereby terminated. Now go suck a tailpipe.

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