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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

It seems a lot like cars in the US, where people regularly discard perfectly good cars and buy new ones. In my extended family, we tend to keep cars for decades, driving them daily. If you keep them maintained (and maintenance is cheap), you can keep them operating just fine for a long time.

Heck, my truck is 25 years old, I've had it for 20 years, costs me about $300/yr in maintenance, insurance is cheap (no collision), no worries about somebody stealing or damaging it, and I go out on a frosty morning, turn the key, and it starts right up.

I don't feel any urge to replace it with a new one.

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The japanese are even more insane there. Their inspections are insanely expensive, to the point where cars older than 5-6 years have essentially negative value, as the biannual inspection would cost something like $5k.

http://followrory.blogspot.com/2013/06/shaken-car-inspection...

Other than the absurd "cash for clunkers" program, the government here is fairly friendly to us old car drivers. For example, a couple days ago was the last time I have to have my truck emissions tested. At 25 years of age it drops off the radar.

My 40 year old Dodge now qualifies for "collector plates" where, for a one time fee, I never have to pay the annual registration fee again.

And, of course, there is quite an industry in the US providing repair/maintenance parts for those old machines for far less money than parts for new cars. It's really quite nice if you like having those cars.

US regulation is weird. Stuff that is wildly not compliant to modern standards is grandfathered in, while stuff that in many respects meets MORE stringent standards (e.g. anything sold in western europe) can't be registered.

I don't find it weird. First, the probably insignificant numbers make the impact negligible. Second, it is fair that decisions made in good faith under the rules applicable at the time are not retroactively punished.

But that same argument argues to allow harmonization with similar standards. If I wanted to buy, say, a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Scirocco, and have it shipped to the US to drive why shouldn't I be able to. It passes the stringent Euro standards, is based on the same platform as several US-sanctioned vehicles, and uses the same powerplants.

Generally disagree. People react pretty negatively to having stuff that they purchased in good faith being taken away from them. There are limits of course. State inspections (where they exist) tend to keep you from driving a vehicle that's seriously dangerous or polluting but don't require things to be up to all current standards. This seems a bigger deal in general than whether people can buy something that they don't already own given that there are alternatives--which for the majority--are perfectly satisfactory. (Not arguing for silly government regulations of course but, at the margins, I find many more things to get much more annoyed about.)

That is not my argument. I'm saying why am I not allowed to import a vehicle from a country with standards that are at least equivalent, if not more stringent than our own? I'm talking about a new vehicle on sale in a 1st world country. I could even buy the same vehicle in Mexico, drive it across the border, and drive it here legally if I was a Mexican citizen on vacation.

* Well, technically I could import it for "display purposes", but it could not be registered for road use.

I have friends and family stationed at a US military base in Germany. They really liked the German cars but knew they weren't going to stay. The local dealer has an Americanization option. It basically changes the bumpers, headlights, and pilot lights and the ECU fuel map.

The front bumper requirement explains why American cars don't look as svelte as their european equivalents.

But first is true for both cases. If you want to buy something like a Porsche 959, there are only ~200 of them in the world. To get them in the US you have to go through quite the process to have the emissions stuff modified and updated. Even if every one was in the US and constantly driving, I doubt the emissions impact would be worse than a few semi's from the 1970s (and I bet there are plenty of those still on the roads).

Insignificant numbers is right. When was the last time you saw a '72 Dodge on the road?

What they look like: http://www.carinsurancecomparison.com/car-insurance-rates-fo...

Sometime in the last year or two I saw an old Barracuda in the local Whole Foods parking lot. Don't know the model year.

Which motor do you have?

A stroked & bored 340. It dynos at 380-390 hp.

Ah, that does sound like it would be worth hanging on to.

When you said "1972 Dodge" I hoped it was something with a little more oomph than a slant-6 :-)

I was going to put a big block in it, but several moparheads told me the bb's unbalance the car (too heavy) and that the 340 was a great block that could be upgraded to pretty hefty power levels.

They were right, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I dislike chrome plate and billet engine dress-up stuff, I got all go and no show parts. (And a few whoa upgrades.)

Not often...still see more than few old beater late-80s Mercedes (Can't kill those old 300Ds)/Honda Accords and the like. I since this is mode or less the deep south K5 Blazer's are not exactly extinct either. 25 years ago is 1989 model year at this point.

There's a perfectly rational reason for shaken (車検), though most HNers won't like it. It's designed to help a few parts of the auto industry value chain, from manufacturers (who get a domestic market which is, basically, forced into a 6-year upgrade cycle) to smaller-scale exporters (who get a constant stream of perfectly usable cars for essentially scrap value, then resell them to emerging markets for significant fractions of their off-the-lot value, because "everyone knows" that Japanese cars last forever).

Interesting - I think the same logic could probably explain the house price depreciation discussed in the article too. The accounting / mortgage rules Kohsuke mentioned above would definitely have a very positive effect on the construction industry, and the Japanese government has a history of expensive net-negative schemes to help this industry (see also: concrete rivers).

I think many of those cars are then moved on to places like the Solomon Islands?

Here's one website that specializes in these: http://www.tradecarview.com/

Don't get too excited at some of the crazy prices. They don't include shipping costs and none of the cheap cars will be street-legal in Europe or North America.

Moved all over, actually. Australia is a big importer, all of SE Asia, etc.

Yup. The cynicism of Japanese consumer law can be breathtaking.

Have you followed the sorry debacle of Abe's third arrow? Any policy initiative that threatens a vested interest eventually gets overturned.

I'll bet that the auto industry lobbied for those expensive inspections.

If you haven't seen it, you should look up the "modus vs. volvo" crash experiment (videos come up top in search results). It is half-drowned in "breathless TV", but it's interesting.

Car manufacturers did up their safety game over the last decades. My daily drive is also a car of a certain age, and that's the only doubt I have about it ...

When I got my driver's license last year I had to go through some education on driving risks, and they showed us some cars that had been in actual accidents. The main takeaway from that was that you really, REALLY, want a car from this side of the 2000's. There has been a tremendous amount of work put into safety features in the last 15 years across the board, and you SHOULD take advantage of that.

Actual wrecks, or just pictures?

Actual wrecks from actual accidents. Not fatal ones, but still serious enough that you got to see how the cars were deformed by collision.

Sounds like a pretty efficient tool of persuasion. Genius.

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