How long before that new car is just a throw away item?

My gen-1 Paseo was 20yo when sold in WA for $200 to the kid of a friend of mine -- had 285K, on the original clutch, and still got 35 mpg.

There was a JDM 1.3L turbo version of that car's engine (4E-FTE) that bolted right in, provided you had the right ECU and pigtail harness adapters -- could take a lot more boost than OEM, as in 180 wheel hp with no real hit on reliability. Back when I was thinking about it Y2Ks... getting a 4E-FTE shipped from JDM cost as much for shipping as the motor / trans, something crazy like $600 shipped. So you could have a 180 whp, 2000-lb-soaking-wet FWD rocket roller skate, for $600 and your own labour to drop the drivetrain in (probably needed an LSD and shorter gearing from a Starlet C52 5-spd, whilst we're dreaming )

Could kick myself for not going for it in Y2Ks, would've been a terror to the BMW crowd of the Dubya years

 

Right now they're tolling with the punches like everybody else.

No more V8s, eh?
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/worlds-fastest-pick-truck-meet-777bhp-v8-ram-rumble-bee-srt
https://www.jeep.com/twelve4twelve/wrangler-willys-392.html

 

What gets me about the '4-cylinder turbo to replace V8s' path in up-to-half-tonne in the States... is the reason why mfrs added cylinder count in the first place, early 20th century.

Ford had lots of Fours in the early 20th century -- selling them as fast as could be built. But the issue with Inline-Fours, is they only get a combustion stroke in two places in a crank revolution. When Ford introduced the Flathead V8, that added two more places on the crank, torque could be applied... and thus gangsters bought them up

This is why 60-deg V12s feel almost effortless under throttle -- you have six places on the crank each cylinder is applying torque, smoothing out the delta between them. Trucks that haul or climb w/ 4WD need this torque, thus the ubiquitous 90-deg V8 in most passenger gas applications.

But when you turbocharge an I-4... all you do is increase the amt of push, until the next cylinder can fire, 180-crank degrees away -- making the delta larger, not smaller. Compound this with the extra heat... and this is why turbocharged Fours don't last all that long in HD hauling or climbing applications -- they have to be spinning pretty fast for those deltas not to catch up with you.

Toyota's V8s used to be loafing at their purpose for being. This new turbo V6 isn't going to inherit the legacy of Toyota V8s, for many reasons but for this discussion, due to this focus on short-term-gain on emissions, at the cost of being far less reliable and long-lived for the people buying 4WD trucks. It's better than making a Four do Tundra work... but only going to get worse before petrol ICEs are phased out entirely.

 

FOMOCO and RAM both cried "Not in the face!" a couple of years ago...and promised to kill off the V8s.
GM has quietly kept 5.3-liter and 6.2-liter V8s in their lineups.

Markets do respond.....

 

And it's nice that these LS-based V8s are some of the best available to Everyone. Salvage yards are teeming with loads of iron- and aluminium-block versions from dead trucks and vans to pick from, up to 8.1L (496 ci) if you're lucky.

Selling ludicrous 1.2L-turbo crossies like the Envista may be off-putting to anyone wanting to merge with 3 people aboard onto the freeway w/o foot to wood (11-sec 0-60 with one 200-lb driver, when a Civic with an Atkinson-cycle 150bhp NA 2.0L, does it in 7.7), but man do their CAFE sacrifices make way for 6.2L and smaller LS V8s to stay (in every new V8 GM truck and Corvette, plus the 5.5L flat-plane-crank one in baller-spec Corvettes).

 

Customers saw the V8 and thought "8 is better than 4 or 6." But that's not the point. The benefit of a V8 (at least that of a cross-plane crank V8) is it has the engine balance of an inline 6 cylinder but is about as long as a 4 cylinder. Today we can get around a 4 cylinder's secondary imbalance making the V8 obsolete. We can even reduce the vibrations from a 3 cylinder enough to make that feasible.

 

I don't believe the number of cylinders changed the longevity of those engines. There are plenty of 6-cylinder and 4-cylinder engines with plenty of power that have extremely long-life track records. Most of the million-mile engines that I'm familiar with were 6-cylinder, not V8s.

The problem is that now we have computer simulations that attempt to design parts that last at least as long as it takes to keep customers happy while at the same time costing as little as possible. In the 80's and 90's everything was overbuilt and sometimes lasted seemingly forever as a result.

 

It may help to understand that the Japanese government desired that status, and worked to cultivate it.

Taxes on automobile registrations are relatively cheap for new cars in Japan, and then they rise after a few years. They get to be rather extortionate on older cars. If you see someone in Japan driving around in a 15 year old car, know that they paid through the nose to hang on to that relic.

Why?

They wanted to have extremely low pollution from auto emissions.
They wanted the best road safety.
They wanted to stimulate and support their domestic auto-manufacturing industries.

So the tax structure is very deliberately stacked to encourage short first ownerships. Then those cars are shipped overseas, which has created very large markets for gently used Japanese cars all over the far east.

Think about how little maintenance the average modern Japanese car actually needs- especially when operated on an island by people with relatively low personal mileage needs: They aren't exactly skipping out on very much. Those cars are still in fantastic condition.

 

Of course. But they don't have to take an engine designed to output 100 hp and make it into a 400 hp engine. There are 6 cylinder engines designed to produce 400 hp or more designed from the ground up.

Cylinder count has very little to do with power output. You can make the cylinders bigger, for an example. There are V8s designed to output 100hp and turning those into 400 hp engines would also affect their longevity.

 

Back to the OP on disposable cars, I felt that was going to be the outcome of fuel cell cars, at least the hydrogen fueled ones. PEM fuel cells were losing output faster than ICEs over time. Then the very high pressure vessel that is the fuel tank had a set lifespan. The maintenance and replacement costs might be something acceptable for commercial vehicles. They won't be for most private car owners.