90's Audis had 5mph bumpers and they look ok. better than the current stuff actually.
Posted on 02/27/2024 8:18:00 AM PST by Red Badger
Edited on 02/28/2024 7:58:14 PM PST by Chris Robinson. [history]
Where I’ll be camping is likely a cell phone dead zone. Unless i download stuff beforehand, bluetooth is useless.
There is a local family owned appliance store that has an old GE fridge in their showroom. It is the kind with the round condenser on the top.
I believe it is a 1938.
It looks similar to this:
https://reclaimedfortwayne.com/products/1930s-ge-monitor-top-refrigerator
We (My father) had a Firestone Fridge from the 1940s
It looked similar to this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/383804608206
It sat out in the garage for years. I think my mom gave it away in the 1990s. She would defrost it once a year in the summer. There would be 2-3” of ice around the freezer inside. She gave it away about twenty years ago. It still worked.
Don’t manufacturer’s know that people will pay a premium for well designed quality goods that last a decent while?.................
2. Once you've sold one to everyone who is willing to pay that premium, it will be decades before they have to replace them.
They did. But they also didn’t. A lot of it was the root technology at the time. We just didn’t have the ability to make “delicate” machines and electronic. There was not printed circuit board. There were no small tolerance transistors and resistors. If it didn’t get shot those things were hard to break. Of course on the other hand there was also the significantly less durable things. Like TVs. I remember when the first thing you’d run into in any hardware store was the tube tester. And it always had a line. Every couple of months something on the TV wasn’t working so you’d take the back off, look at the schematic on the back, take out a bunch of tubes, go stick em in the tester, replace all the ones that failed, go back home and put the TV back together. There were plenty of things that had a similar constant maintenance cycle. In the end I think things are more reliable now.
But those new cars will go and go. 100,000 miles, even 200,000. I remember when family vacations were “we’re going here unless the car breaks”. And there was a good chunk of the time your vacation was in the town nearest the breakdown.
I have Pandora and Amazon music and have downloaded a lot of music to my phone but see your point
and nothing was even remotely water resistant, much less waterproof
And nothing like burning through 6-8 d cell batteries to play music for a few hours
Said similar recently, I clearly remember my dad saying an American car with >80K miles on it was almost always worn out.
I mostly listen to talk radio or podcasts so downloading far ahead of time isn’t all that good.
Terrestrial radio is necessary for the long term safety of America. I’m old enough to remember when the cell system went down last week.
Great article. I grew up in the 50s and we had none of this: “…downloads, firmware updates, cyber crooks, credit card fraud,platforms, passwords, no little pull-down menus, no verifications or account recovery protocols.” We never once used “mother’s maiden name.”
The lights always came on and dial tone was 100% reliable. Not once did we say “Can you hear me? You’re breaking up. What?”
You never had to call “Customer Support.” Heck, nobody had ever even HEARD of “customer support” because it wasn’t needed and hadn’t been invented.
There was zero constant insanity about election theft, commies grabbing control, trannies, homos, murdering babies, excrement all over city streets, graffiti everywhere, druggies shooting up everywhere.
Lawfare was an unheard of concept. Persecuting ex-presidents, his attorneies, and confidants was off limits. Abolishing the electoral college was off limits.
In short, the country was sane and everything worked.
In a generation or two, there will not be anybody with living memory anbout the days when everything worked.
/old curmudgeon rant.
Great song, too.
When mr mm and i appliance shop, we look for the least computer driven things we can. We avoid computer chips in a control pad at all cost because when they go, it’s a fortune to replace.
Planned obsolescence.
It’s the epitome of hypocrisy that democrats/leftists/greenies whine about the environment and yet don’t say a thing about stuff that is not made to last (Or that is made to not last) or be repaired any more.
They endlessly complain about landfills and then make sure we fill them up with broken junk..................
Yeah, instead go after disposable diapers.
Apparently that is why the old units(like my ages-old chest freezer) has never failed & is still working, even after several moves. Also must be the reason why my various portable A/C inits have had to be replaced. Now if if they know why these cooling units fail, why can’t overcome that problem? After all, they automatically have already increased the price when you buy the next one.
When I was going to college, I had an old 1955 Pontiac Star Chief. I paid $250 for it. The body, interior, and engine were in very good shape. I worked after school until closing at a local Sears store. Rarely did I have spare money I wanted to have for proper maintence of the car. It often had black oil and was in need of new tires. It was a V8 engine and an automatic transmission.
Yet, I could drive it to a favorite California beach, a short ways north of Santa Monica, a trip of more than 80 miles, and I’d use less than 1/4 tank of gas.
Many times when I was going to college, I’d just need to “take a break”, and I’d leave work on a Friday nite, when the store closed, and drive straight thru to a sisters in northen California, about an eight hour drive, get some sleep, visit, and by Sunday evening head back down home.
That car loved the highway and in spite of my little-money enforced low maintaintance, never gave me any trouble.
“.I love radios but they go bad after a zillion years...capacitors start to leak, diodes fail...you know...elecronics and age.. “
Two channel audio repair places still exist. It’s mostly the high end stuff that gets fixed
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/support/servicenetwork
90's Audis had 5mph bumpers and they look ok. better than the current stuff actually.
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