My Neon was a reliable car that only conked out when the water pump let go at 120,000 miles and the wife decided that in stop and go traffic she would drive the 1/4 mile to the next offramp.
It didn’t make it.
My big criticism was that after having the Shadow, the Neon was a huge stepdown despite being the replacement. Damn I miss my Shadow.
As datapoints: Wife’s car is 10 years old, mine is 11 and the broke-ass third car (connecting rod finally broke, replacing the engine this summer) is 17 years old.
Oh and my new Tesla 3 is -2 years old. 
True. But a lot of them could be going to the scrapyard.
My bold. I’m not an auto engineer, but paint does seem to be about 1000 times better than it was a couple decades ago. I imagine that the increased use of composite materials in the body panels also help. When was the last time you saw a car on the road that was really rusted?
I have a 2001 Saturn SC2, with 55K miles on it. Saturn ended the SC2 model with the 2002 model year. Saturn itself ended all production in 2009, and was officially dissolved as a company at the end of 2010.
Very few mass-market cars are built with any substantial amount of composites. They’re still usually going to be steel bodies, or aluminum in mid- to high-end vehicles. They’re protected from corrosion by galvanization and other processes.
I guess your anecdatum must be better than his actual data! 
Certain members of the straightdope need to kick their “they don’t make 'em like they used to” mindset. The belief that old cars were heavy, safe, reliable, beasts is bullshit. The belief that old cars are a monolithic group is also bullshit.
They don’t. Thank God. 
I had a 1983 motorcycle(bought in 87) Rode it for twelve years, 286K miles. Despite minimal care, the paint still looked good and the only rust was a trace on a few bolt heads.
sure, but apart from cars which are wrecked (and totaled) I don’t think many of the cars being scrapped are that new.
Currently, the Smart car is pretty much considered a major fail. It does nothing well (not even get good MPG for size) except be small.
Going for post-1990 is too broad. The early 90’s and 80’s blend together. Major tech advances by and around 2000-2005 carry over and changed so many cars for the better.
Any laughers now are actually planned to be basic/cheap, but we’ve lept so far forward, even a current laugher is actually good, and complaints become ‘first world problems.’
Many years ago, complaints were about death, safety, pollution, being robbed by GM, etc.
Doesn’t quite have the same effect now when you have a laugher car. The whole bracket has been moved up.
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Well, they were heavy.
1977 Ford LTD Landau: 4332 lbs.
2016 Ford Taurus SHO: 4343 lbs
2016 Tesla S P90D: 4936 lbs.
A few months ago I rented a Kia Soul just for an interesting ride on a business trip. It ran well but I soon got the impression that everything about the controls was just lightweight and cheap. Then on a mountain road I discovered the steering was loose!! :eek: Under heavy side loading there was about 3" freeplay at the steering wheel rim!
A few weeks later I read this:
Building a car where there was some question about whether the *STEERING SHAFT *could be assembled properly is just stupid and probably cheap. That technology was figured out in the 1950’s!
Crash test video of a 1959 Chevy vs a 2009 Chevy, it’s amazing how much worse the older car fares.
With this in mind, and staying in this decade, I nominate:
But are any of them truly “awful” compared to 70’s, 80’s, even 90’s model years? Probably not.
That’s astonishing. Apparently, they were gluing the pinion gear to the shaft. Who the hell ever thought that was a good idea?
Yeah? Did you park it outdoors year-round and ride it in winter so it could get blasted with salt and anti-skid for weeks on end?
No salt here but it did get stored outside. Got ridden in winter as much as weather allowed.
ETA: It was a salt air enviroment.
Pretty sure you must not live in the Pacific Northwest - many 15-20 year-old cars here are daily drivers, helped, I’m sure by the lack of salted winter roads. Just sold my 30 year-old Volvo wagon and ‘Swedish Bricks’ of this vintage are very common hereabouts.