I partially agree.
Post-1995 cars definitely seem to have lower quality paint in general, but that's usually stuff like thinner clear coat or noticeable orange peel effect. Though in some extreme cases, entire sheets of paint literally fall off the car (oddly enough Toyotas are most badly affected by this). However the rustproofing of the typical 2000s car seems to be just as good as it was in the 1990s.
Most car makers finally had the galvanizing process mastered by the late '80s, which is why there are plenty of completely rust-free 20 year old cars in dry climates. The typical 2000s car in Australia will have virtually no rust but also virtually no clear coat left either.
That said, I spotted the tiniest bit of surface rust on the rear tailgate hinges of ex-Mrs Pee's 2005 Honda Jazz a couple of weeks ago.
Of course no amount of undercoating or galvanizing can defeat the effects of heavily salted winter roads in some parts of the world, but are post-1995 cars that much worse than pre-1995 ones?
I'm talking about pre-1995 Mercedes, that had the entire underbody coated with a couple-mm thick spray-on rubber, every cavity sprayed with wax and sealed with rubber plugs so that no water could get in. Some were even completely galvanized. Those lasted forever even in salty conditions, typically 20+ years until they started to show signs of rust. The ones I've seen here personally that are now 30+ years old have the beginning stages of critical rust underneath the rubber undercoating. I've seen them in junkyards completely rotted out too, I guess it depends on how much they were driven in the salt.
Compared to a post-95 Merc, more accurately I think it was post the Daimler-Chrysler merger, that they stopped putting undercoating on, made the chassis just spot-welded folded sheet metal covered in a single primer layer, not even seam sealed, with holes in the chassis everywhere. Those rusted out in 10-15 years. There are almost none on the road any more. A relative's late-90s Merc had rust so bad that it was unsafe for the road in under 10 years, I think it was the front spring perches or strut mounts that rusted out.
Mercedes pre- and post- Chrysler merger are two completely different companies and cars. Quality took a nosedive and was worse than competitors for a long time. Pre-95 they were built like tanks, everything was serviceable and made to be serviced, didn't require special tools, everything was built ruggedly, the interior was high quality, not a lot of breakable plastics, even after 30+ years most of them still have all original unbroken interior plastic parts, switches, knobs, etc (this is in Europe, I suppose they fared worse in hotter climates), the dash rarely cracks, there are no noises or plastic squeaks from the interior. As a mechanic they are a dream to work on compared to anything from the late-90s on. (and also compared to BMW from the same era that were ugly, had way plasticy interiors, and squeak and rattle a LOT)
They started to catch back up in the late 00's but then you already have overcomplicated computerized plastic gadgets on wheels era already.
Post-1995 cars definitely seem to have lower quality paint in general, but that's usually stuff like thinner clear coat or noticeable orange peel effect. Though in some extreme cases, entire sheets of paint literally fall off the car (oddly enough Toyotas are most badly affected by this). However the rustproofing of the typical 2000s car seems to be just as good as it was in the 1990s.
Yeah, maybe Toyota was better at rustproofing at that time. There were a lot of bad cars pre-95 too, usually the cheap small econoboxes that were produced for the poorest masses, would rust fast too.
If you're looking for a vintage car these days, there's a lot of survivor bias, you don't see those that have died already, so those that survive are usually good specimens. But beware and always thoroughly inspect everything, especially the underbody, chassis and suspension, there are flippers out there that will hide the rust under filler and paint and scam people, they usually focus on the body that is visible from the top and not the underbody, so you could have a freshly painted mint looking car with a lot of hidden rust and structural issues. Even to the point they're unsafe to drive.
Most car makers finally had the galvanizing process mastered by the late '80s, which is why there are plenty of completely rust-free 20 year old cars in dry climates. The typical 2000s car in Australia will have virtually no rust but also virtually no clear coat left either.
Galvanizing was an exception that was reserved only for the upper-end luxury cars, all others were just painted (to various degrees of success)
That said, I spotted the tiniest bit of surface rust on the rear tailgate hinges of ex-Mrs Pee's 2005 Honda Jazz a couple of weeks ago.
Often the rust is hidden underneath the plastics covering the underbody, where the manufacturer skimps with paint since it's not a vidible part, where it gets wet and collects road salt and dirt in inaccessible places that can't get washed out. You find it when you take off the plastics. Though I'm not experienced with anything except Merc's so I can't say how the Fit is made.
There are some cases where OEM isn't good enough, like where my HVAC blower burned out, and I had the option of OEM for $300 or a remanufacturing company for $40. Obviously I chose the latter, and the part has lasted over 4 years as of now.
Some OEMs have dropped QC so far that they get batches of defective parts. In that case aftermarket will definitely be better, But it's normally the other way around.
RE: hybrids and EVs
The added complication outweighs any fuel savings. The manufacturing costs of the additional parts, the long-term added failure points and parts availability being questionable past 10 years, make them a short-term consumer item, made to be thrown away after the warranty expires.
Even if you ignore the long term parts availability for the stuff like inverters, cables, batteries, controllers, the software and programming of those controllers and computers is proprietary and once those computers start dying after 10+ years, nobody is making them any more, so you have no option to repair them (even remanufacturing will become unviable once the originals run out).
That is if the software has been cracked or reverse engineered enough to be able to service them. With newer cars the software is often locked down so much that any programming requires an online connection to the OEM's cloud servers with the officially licensed expensive tool they require, so after the OEM shuts the support down, programming is dead.
This is what will ultimately kill all modern computerized cars: the computers dying or becoming unserviceable. It being illegal to replace the original computers with aftermarket ones due to emissions and safety laws prohibiting tampering with any emissions or safaty components on a car.
A car without proprietary electronics and software, that is completely mechanical, will still be serviceable 100 years from now, even if all the original manufacturing plans and blueprints have been lost, you can just take it apart, measure each component and make new ones from scratch: there's nothing "hidden" or "protected" (either by the difficulty of reverse engineering or illegal because of intellectual property laws) such as software and chips inside a computer module.
EVs are an even bigger money pit: the relative affordability of them in recent times is all because they have been heavily subsidized by other means, but all that money to build them has gone from all of our pockets with inflation anyway. We all subsidized the manufacturing and creation of these cars that are not price or efficiency competitive to ICE cars.
They were subsidized by forcing auto makers to make them in the first place. They had to spend money that they got from their income or from taking loans, to design and build them. Then because they were not competitive with ICE cars the consumers had to be forced to buy them with subsidies. Then all their "dirty" manufacturing, like mining and refining of raw minerals and their onstruction and assembly into half-products was made overseas in foreign countries that don't have the environmental or worker protection laws that Western countries do.
Then their efficiency, if you account for all the losses in the electricity power plant, transformers and transmission lines, the grid, the charger, until it gets into the battery, is worse than an ICE car burning the fuel directly.
But you know who built and maintained that electricity grid and those power plants? You, via your taxes, inflation, or electricity bill. It's all subsidized, so the energy price is unrealistically low.
