The reliability of today's cars is at the mercy of the electronics components. Older cars were more reliable because they had much fewer electronics. Today they are more sofisticated, better equiped with all kind of gadgets that will let go one day or another. Engineers design those electronic components to make them last a certain time, (normally the design time, for a car it's around 5000 hours, for a snomobile it's 300 hours etc) after that, make some prayers. Older auto trannies had fully mechanical controls, today there's only solenoid valves controlled by computer, if the computer fails and closes 2 clutch pack at the same time, it blows the whole thing up, this was impossible before. This was the problem of the dodge caravans with 4 speed auto. Older cars had their problems too, but today most of the problems are caused by electronic components failures, and cheaper desing to reduce production costs. One good trick to know which car is reliable is to have a talk with cab drivers. It's true they drive FWD impala's but they have to replace the tranny at every 150-170k km while olders RWD chevy caprice could easily last aroud 5-600k km without any major problems. Today one of the few to be as reliable is the camry. The only RWD left is the Ford Crown Victoria. I had a few bad experiences with a new 84 244 GL(guess we were not lucky and got a lemon), my dad got rid of its 86 740 GLE last year, no major problems, 300k km no rust (18 years in canada with no rust is a record) catch ya later folks
