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Understanding the Relative Reliability of Vintage Cars
I am not a professional mechanic. I don’t fix other people’s cars for money. I do, however, repair my own vehicles. And having owned over a hundred cars, including 70 BMWs, 40 of which were the boxy little 1970’s BMW 2002 sedan, I think I have a pretty good hobbyist’s bead on repair and reliability-related issues. Occasionally I make errors of myopia—drawing incorrect conclusions from too small a sample—but generally, when I bounce things off friends of mine who are professional wrenches, I’m not too far off the mark.
With that oddly defensive-sounding preamble, let me say what’s on my mind.
If you’re thinking of buying and daily-driving a vintage car, or taking an extended road trip in one, you need to either have a decent level of do-it-yourself mechanical skill, or expect to be writing checks to a specialty repair shop. And even with that, at some point the car is likely to break at an inconvenient time and location. If you’re not willing to deal with those realities, you perhaps shouldn’t own and drive a vintage car further than to occasional cars and coffees. And it doesn’t matter if the car was “restored” (whatever the hell that means), whether that’s by you, a big-name restoration shop, or a seller on Bring a Trailer with a good photographic studio that makes the car look like it’s a finished product. While there is a lot of truth to the view that well-cared-for vintage cars, even rolling Lucas jokes like my two Lotuses, behave very differently when treated as pampered sunny Sunday drivers than they did as rain-soaked dailies, you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s the same thing as daily-driving a ten-year-old 150,000-mile Camry. Got it?
I first began to feel the need to drop this truth bomb during the post-pandemic run-up in vintage car values. A good friend who is a professional wrench and I fielded a flurry of questions from folks who’d clicked and bought high-dollar “restored” (there are those quotes again) BMW 2002s and were disappointed when what was delivered was not the like-new fully-turn-key car of their dreams. I’m not a body-and-paint person, so I can’t comment on nuances of body restoration, but I can comment on why, mechanically, a repaired/refurbished/resurrected/restored vintage car is highly unlikely to be “like new.”
Don’t get me wrong—I adore the simplicity and the design aesthetic of pre-big-bumper pre-catalytic converter cars (which is what I usually mean when I say “vintage car”), where you can open the engine compartment and know what every component does simply by looking at it. That simplicity does mean that you’re likely to be able to diagnose a problem—and hopefully fix it—on the side of the road, but it doesn’t mean that that car back in its day was more reliable than late-model car is now, and it certainly doesn’t mean that a vintage car, even a well-maintained one, is less likely than a late-model car to wind up in the breakdown lane.
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I’ve given a lot of thought over the years to why this is true, and I’ve come up with five layers of reasons. Not surprisingly, the first has to do with technological improvements in modern cars that you’d really have a hard time seriously arguing don’t offer a step-improvement in reliability over their vintage counterparts. I have written multiple articles about what I call “The Big Seven” things likely to strand a vintage car (fuel delivery, ignition, cooling, charging, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints, the last of which is on the list not so much because they’re failure-prone but because if they break, you lose control of the car, so you can’t afford to be wrong about them). The first three of these are dramatically improved on newer cars. There is zero question that modern electronic ignition systems are far more reliable than points-and-condenser systems, that the electronic fuel injection that’s been in nearly every car since the early 1980s is vastly superior at letting a dead-cold car start instantly at the crack of a key, and that cooling systems in newer cars are actually designed for the temperature extremes that are experienced in hot American summer traffic as opposed to those in vintage cars designed for cool breezes in Bavarian forests, overcast British days, and balmy motoring around Lake Como. (I vividly recall attending the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix in the heat of July a few years ago, and as I approached the venue, seeing increasing numbers of Jaguars and Lamborghinis in the breakdown lane with their hoods up.)
To look at two more of The Big Seven, with charging systems, the reliability advantage of newer cars is less of a slam-dunk. On the one hand, modern alternators with the voltage regulator integrated inside are generally more reliable than their older counterparts with external regulators simply because there’s no longer the failure mode of breakage in the wires and connectors that tie them together, but on the other hand, if the alternator dies, a vintage car can probably run for half a day on a fully-charged battery, whereas a modern electronic-laden car may drain the battery in less than an hour. Similarly, belts are a toss-up. Vintage cars often have their belts slacken due to degradation of rubber bushings in the adjustment track. Modern cars have serpentine belts with automatic tensioners that keep the belt tight, but if the tensioner fails, all hell breaks loose.
Of course, advancements come at a cost. When a vintage car has no spark, the odds are strong that the points have closed up or a wire has broken off the connector to the coil, both of which are easy fixes. When it has no fuel, it’s almost always a dead fuel pump or a clogged fuel filter. You may not have spares with you, but once procured, you’re soon on your way. In contrast, these things are non-trivial to diagnose on complex modern cars. And some of you may have gagged when I said that cooling systems in modern cars are far better than those in vintage cars. To be balanced about it, yes they’re designed to perform in actual real-world high-temperature environments, but they also have many plastic components, and when one of them breaks, the car can suffer a catastrophic coolant loss which can easily result in engine damage.
The second layer of vintage car problems has to do with issues of parts quality. Most of our beloved vintage cars exist in small quantities, certainly not the millions or even tens of thousands like those models still under warranty or those still used as daily drivers. Once cars pass a certain age, the manufacturer bears no real responsibility for parts quality (or even availability) on older models. Even if you buy a “genuine” part in a manufacturer-logo’d box at a dealership, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that that part is the same one that went on the car when it was new. It may or may not be made by the same subcontractor, and may or may not (but likely not) be subject to the same quality control standards that it was when the manufacturer and/or dealership would have to eat the repair cost if it broke under warranty.
The third layer is that, even if you’re doing a systematic restoration or paying someone else to do so, you’re never going to replace everything. You usually can’t, because of either parts availability, cost, or both. And it’s usually not necessary. For example, on vintage BMWs, front subframes almost never break (well, the left engine mount plate breaks, but that’s weldable). Front MacPherson strut housings last the life of the car unless they’re bent in a collision. Instead, you replace what’s broken, and prophylactically address what’s likely to break. Of course, as cars from the 1960s are now in their sixth decade of service, things that never used to break are now breaking. So when you turn the key and nothing happens, don’t be surprised when it’s not the battery, or the starter motor, or the solenoid, or a broken wire, but turns out to be the ignition switch in the steering column. Or when there’s play in one of the wheels, you find that it’s not the wheel bearing but the stub axle about which the forums say “those pretty much never wear out.”
The next layer took me a while to see, but it goes like this: The issues of quality control and quality assurance apply not only to individual parts, but also to the entire car viewed as a manufactured system. Restoration shops don’t refurbish cars in sufficient numbers to be able to do anything comparable to the systematic testing, evaluation, data-gathering, and statistical analysis that manufacturers do. They may have opinions regarding which alternators and water pumps seem to be less failure-prone, but they’re not testing fleets of vehicles in Death Valley. No matter how thorough a restorer is, or how good your trustworthy mechanic is, the result is never going to be the same thing as a manufacturer building a commercial quantity of cars that they and a network of dealerships are on the hook for repairing under warranty. And you as one backyard DIY mechanic, reading opinions on enthusiast forums, are doing the best you can, but the idea that you’re an automotive W. Edwards Deming running a six-sigma total quality management system is ludicrous.
The last layer is one of expectation. Many of us love vintage cars because of their pre-wind-tunnel lines, their period and nationality-evoking interiors, and the nostalgia they trigger because we wanted them in high school or when we were young adults, couldn’t afford one then, but can now. But even questions of reliability aside, it is highly unlikely that a vintage car is ever going to approach the tightness, quiet, and comfort of the modern car that is probably your daily driver. Personally, I prefer the honesty of a vintage car with patina—it doesn’t surprise you when you drive it, and the car actually feels like the age that it is. Door seals are a big topic in the vintage BMW world. I get that, if you have a pretty shiny car with a redone interior, you want to stop that whoosh and whistle at highway speeds, but even if you do, the car is never going to have the hush of your daily.
I’m certainly not telling you not to buy the vintage car you’ve always wanted. I’m just saying that you should love it and respect it for what it is. It’s probably nearly as old as you are. It’s got quirks. It’s got needs. Hell, it’s probably got bunions and gout. Maybe even a little incontinence. It’s likely to need the same amount of professional attention that you do these days. Give it to it.
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Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.
I have a Lancia Fulvia Coupe. I’ve seen mechanics turn white at the thought of working on it. I’ve owned the car for 20 years. Yes, there have been issues, but the joy she gives when I’m driving her makes it worth every penny.
At car shows, I’m often asked, “where do you get parts?” I answer but in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “You’re not ready for this.”
Hi Rob,
Those cars you describe are hardly ” Vintage ” ( 1919 – 1930 ) they should really be described as ” Classic” though they are probably still more user friendly than modern computer controlled “Tin Boxes”
And, of course, the German brands have become the masters of penny pinching. BMW tried to save a couple pennies on chain tensioners on the N20 which resulted in engine failures and lawsuits. The number of critical plastic components on my GT4 is truly frightening. I’m just waiting for that plastic oil pan to develop a crack. I’m sure it’s all been engineered so that happens after the warranty has expired.
Once upon a time, my neighbor had a 2002 sitting out on the street. I got tired of looking at it so I asked if he would sell it to me, and he did. It wasn’t long before I found out why it was sitting out in the street. I donated it to the local high school auto shop. Lesson learned, but the street view was better.
Bob, my name is Les Levy are you Bob Siegal from LI NY?
Agree with all of the original article, but my experience accentuates these points from the original and from the comments:
We are definitely approaching a time wherein some components and subassemblies fail simply because no one ever engineered them to last to this point, expected them to last to this point, or most importantly, got to this point. Engineers argue that moving part assemblies degrade with cycles of use, and they are correct, but time has its degradations as well. My hobby cars are to 1968s and a 1956. The 1956 especially has been driven virtually every year since new, it has never had a period of hibernation. No component or assembly on this car was designed for or expected to endure this many cycles of use, days/months/years of service, extremes of climate, anything. Much of it has in fact been replaced with improved components and larger subassemblies, which sometime bring their own problems, but every original component and subassembly is on uncharted ground every new day, because these new days are in wildly uncharted ground from the point of origin perspective. More succinctly, old-time wisdom that “those never break” cannot be considered valid any longer because we and our cars are effectively past their creator’s definition of never.
There is absolutely a sweet spot of manufacture that incorporates massive improvements but does not yet move into massive unserviceable complexity. Dunno what year that ends, but agree that it probably begins approx 1990.
Replacement component and subcomponent quality is absolutely critical. It is not the manufacturer’s complete fault that there is a market position for components that just get one’s machine to cars and coffee and are not suitable for long term reliability or OEM levels of performance. Having said that, I, like Rob and most commenters, recommend buying the absolute best replacement component available. Sadly, that ideallic product is not always available. Sometimes the best anything is still piece of garbage.
Great writing as always from Rob!
Great article Rob. Ironically, this subject has been top of mind lately for me as well. In fact I recently swapped my 1983 “toy” for its 1979 counterpart in part to have a machine with fewer failure points that might leave me stranded. And of the remaining failure points in the ‘79, I feel much more comfortable addressing those in the field than I would with the ‘83.
Excellent article Rob – agree with your points exactly. Unfortunately as our classic automobiles and our bodies continue to age, the hobbyist in me is becoming much more cautious. For me, one of my major gripes is why some people equate a low mileage survivor as commanding an exorbitant premium in the sales price. Some people who are just getting into the hobby don’t realize the pitfalls of any machine that has been sitting for 20 – 30–40 or more years and the attendant deterioration of various parts and assemblies. I agree that some of these websites that spend an exorbitant amount of time and effort on photographs and videos, expanding the greatness of a low mileage survivor failed to even mention what if any preventative maintenance has been performed. I’m sure most of us have experienced firsthand most of the rubber and plastic components failing in our classic automobiles and do not survive much past 10 years at best. And without any documentation showing recent maintenance within the past 2 – 3 years of changing out fan belts, cooling system, hoses, plug wires, etc., I find it laughable that people continue to pay these exorbitant prices. I’ve seen firsthand some of these cars after the fact and when I meet up with the new owner, I find out one of two things is happening – A- they’ve had to spend an enormous amount of money in replacing all of the neglected components or B – they are desperately trying to sell this nightmare immediately to get out from underneath a truly bad purchase. Hopefully you and others that write articles like this and those of us willing to share our experiences will help educate the new people to the obvious realities of classic car ownership. However, watching recent results on some of the big live auctions such as Barrett Jackson and Mecum, I see the good old boys getting drunk and spending an exorbitant amount of money on very questionable automobiles. 🤩😂