re there any statistics showing the distribution of registered cars in the USA? I ask because in my neck of the woods (NE), you don’t see any older cars anymore-I was shocked when I saw a (perfectly preserved ) 1976 Nissan/Datsun 260Z a while back. I would imagine that cars rapidly deteriorate, once they get older than 10 years or so-NE winters are brutal, and once rust starts, it is difficult to fix.
Are therea lot of 30+ year old cars on the road in So cal?
There’s been some threads about this in the past; nothing with hard statistics though.
The consensus is that thanks to technological improvements, better rustproofing, and increased reliability, there’s far more older cars on the road today, at least in the United States, than 20 or 30 years ago. Those older cars tend to be in better condition than the cars at the end of thier lifespan on the roads in decades past.
I was a car nut when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s; I could identify the make, model and year of a car by sight. In the mid-1970s, there were some cars on the road made in the 1960s, but mostly in the later part of the decade. Cars from the 1950s were very uncommon; usually those owned by collectors, and not daily drivers. Because it was the Great Lakes region, the majority of cars that were more than about three or four years old had some rust on it, and the sight of cars that made one think “how the hell does that thing stay together” was all too common. A car that was ten years old was considered really, really old.
The 1980s weren’t much different. The few 1960s-ers cars on the road were usually muscle cars owned by enthusiasts. Little old ladies had Dodge Darts from the early 1970s. Still lots of rust.
Today, approaching the end of the decade that has no name, I see plenty of cars on the road from the 1990s, quite a few from the 1980s, and even a few daily drivers from the 1970s. I’m seeing far more cars on the road that are 20-plus years old than I would have in the 1970s and 1980s, and they’re not owned by collectors. Rust is far less common; usually something seen on beater pickup trucks and late 1970s-mid 1980s poverty hoopties. My parents’ daily driver is a 1992 Mercury Sable - 16 years old, no rust, and working just fine for the most part.
“Poverty hoopties”–great phrase.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, and 20 years ago a new-hire engineer from Illinois told me he was astonished at how many old cars there were out here. And by old, he meant “four years old”.
A mild hijack: He also owned a Hemi Challenger, by the way, which was in storage back in Illinois. Neat looking car. I built a model of it for him. It was the usual hassle you get when trying to reproduce a specific car–the available kits have the wrong options, or the wrong engine, or whatever; the final model had pieces from three different manufacturers’ Challenger kits on it, plus lots of bits from other kits.
It may depend on how frequently a given state requires inspections. Inspecting more often can help weed the junkers off the road.
In 1974 I purchased a 1961 Rambler for $200… drove it until the middle of 1979, so it was 18 years old when I was still driving it…
I have noticed that in states with warmer climates you will find more older cars still in daily use.
Based on nothing more than my powers of observation, I would guesstimate significantly under 1%, at least in greater Orlando. I see perhaps a thousand cars every day, but most days I don’t even see one car from 1968 or earlier.
There’s a survey here which shows that more than 40% of cars on US roads are 11+ years old but doesn’t go back nearly far enough for our purposes.
I’ve owned my '76 Chevy Pickup since 1978. I only use it as a plow truck now, but I could take it out on the road if I wanted.
Sheese. 30 years. I feel old.
Holy, crap, elmwood, your post just made me realize why some people are able to say with certainty that that car is a '54. Not a '53 or a '55. I knew before that it was because because the '53 and '54 had different headlights, and the '54 didn’t have fins but the '55 did. But I just now realized that they were only comparing them to cars within a 5 year range, so the differences really stood out.
For the record, I can tell the difference between an '06 Dodge car and an '07 and later… the '07s have a protruding antenna, while the '06s are flat.
Even in California, the percentage is tiny - I’d estimate it as 0.01% and go from there.
Not to say that we don’t have some old cars on the roads here. Just this past Friday, I saw someone tooling along in a restored Studebaker pickup truck that would have been from 1949 or so. Personally, I’d be afraid to take it on the roads - replacement body parts must be pretty scarce.