9th Aug 2019, 23:01
"engines and transmissions are generally tougher and longer lasting"
Not true at all. Companies like Volkswagen are using plastic oil pans, over at BMW you have plastic water pump impellers, and some years back Ford and GM learned their lesson using plastic intake manifolds on two well praised engines that lead to class action law suits. Cost cutting like this can lead to expensive catastrophic engine failure.
One of the most expensive engine repairs is blown head gaskets, which can be a common thing on these all aluminium engine blocks and cylinder heads used today. Really wasn't a common thing on older engines that were iron block and heads; you had to overheat the engine for a long period of time at a high temp.
9th Aug 2019, 17:48
Generally speaking, here in the US modern engines and transmissions are for sure more efficient with better MPG and definitely not all that fun to repair.
But I disagree on the reliability. Let's take GM for example. The 3.6 VVT "corporate" engine used in their so called full-size cars among other models doesn't really have a great track record thus far when it comes to being reliable; not even close to the 3800 V6 that it replaced. Even in the 70s, on your everyday full-size cars, under the hood lived an ordinary, tough as nails 350 V8. This was also a time were every division excluding Cadillac built their own 350, which were all tooled different but durable. So when it comes down to these old vs. new conversations, I will say that technology, safety maintenance intervals and economy have come a long way, but reliability has gotten worse before better.