Re: Classic car issue

[Simon Favre <simon@domain.elided>]

There's an even more insidious and potentially expensive problem
with modern cars: the electronics. If you think the tooling for a
reproduction plastic dashboard is outrageous, try getting a quote
for reproducing an out-of-production integrated circuit. You could
buy a house for the cost of the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering
charges). When all the existing supply of ECU's (Engine Control
Units) has dried up, any remaining cars in need of one will become
junk. The electronic dashboards will also be a killer of aging cars.
You think the 164 stepper motor gears are a nuisance? You ain't
seen nothing yet. The Weber and Spica cars may outlive them all.

Now, there may well be a period of time when aftermarket ECU's can
be adapted to fit aging cars. I would tend to believe that such
aftermarket suppliers will concentrate on models that sold in great
numbers, which would leave all the V6 Alfas out in the cold. Even
if you did retrofit one of these units to such a car, it would then
no longer be original. In the classic car market, it's the original,
unmodified examples that fetch the highest prices. Any car modified
to get rid of a 20 year old ECU would be considered merely a driver,
not a collector car.

I still think the glass dashboards will be even worse, because 
there's NO standard for them. They're all different from one model 
to the next. At least the ECU's all use a similar set of sensors.

KARL C CHEN wrote:

>I doubt very much any modern cars with plastic interior
>can exist say 100 year later.  The problem is when these 
>plastic pieces are out of production, the cost will be 
>too high for someone make just a few pieces.  Wooden or 
>metal pieces does not have the problem.  The cost of a 
>custom made say a plastic dashboard is just unthinkable.

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