Featured Jay Leno's Picks for Next Generation Collector car includes PRIUS

Sounds like the people that surround me during my commute.

 

That's the day, I have my Artificial Intelligence Robot sell the vehicle for me.

I foresee a future where all we have to do all day, is eat, and stream entertainment into our virtual reality goggles.

 

hasn't that been the goal from day one?

 

Maybe Disney’s movie Wall-E was right.

I just hope we don’t have to evacuate in a spaceship to escape ourselves .

 

Idiocracy did it better. Maybe too well. Scary how much of that one has already come true, and the movie's only 14 years old.

 

Remember this one?

"…Arms that can only lift a spoon
Everyone's gone to the moon"

 

That's an interesting opinion.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
But I don't know if I tend to agree. Because I think it's hard to appreciate sometimes what something could be, when it's current and right in your face.
I like watching older Television Series or Older Movies, I think I was watching an episode of the original 1970's Hawaii Five-O, and there was just a random shot of a random street with parked cars and cars going up and down the street.
It was amazing...it wasn't at the time, it wasn't created to be so, but the whole street was filled with "Classic Cars". Every car that was parked or was driving by, was one that I think I'd call a classic today.
I kind of think the same thing will happen with the passage of time from now.
We may not be that impressed with the homogenized indifference between SUV's or modern Family Sedans, but they are building vehicles today that I think will be appealing to automobile collectors in the future. Which models they may be? I don't know, only time will tell.

I have some candidates I like in my other post. Whether anyone is buying them or restoring them 10-15, 20 years from now? Who knows? But I do think it is possible.
What's boringly available and plain today, may be interesting to the future.
I have spent some full moon nights, browsing through Craigslist, looking at 80's , 90's , 2000's automobiles that I in no way should buy. But sue me if ever since Breaking Bad, I've kind of wanted a Pontiac Aztec. I always talk myself out of it by daybreak.

Can't you imagine in the year 2030, Grandsons and Grandaughters of Millennials at a Car Show, walking with wide eyed wonder around a Pontiac Aztec and exclaming "People use to ride in these? ".

 

Agreed, I think we all agree the Gen 2 is really what really proved that hybrid technology works. I know when I bought my 2006 in the same year, it represented “risk”, as it was still relatively unproven at the time, and I spent a lot of money to do so. I did drive that car for a decade and was relatively “unlucky” having the battery fail at 273k KM and the engine failed at 392k KM (which is not common for these cars), but they car still owed me nothing at that point (as I had saved far more than the repair cost for both in fuel savings) and given that despite these two catastrophic problems, the car never stranded me, which is really impressive engineering.

I never cared very much for the Gen 1 (looked too much like an Echo for me), but I always liked the Gen 2. I think the Gen 3 sharpened the look a bit more (and the seats made me realize how inferior the Gen 2 seating was, lol), and I think the Prime is a great looking car (I felt lukewarm with the Gen 4 looks as I think it tried too hard to be edgy, but think the softening with the ‘19 tweaks improve it a bit).

Regardless of styling though, Prius has had an amazing reliability record to date. Curious to see what the next 5-10 years will bring....

 

The problem with public transport in the US is that what would be a quick 15 minute jaunt in your car becomes a two hour expedition if you do it by bus. Cars eat your money, yes, but they give you back your time. Most of the US has no real public transportation, just a feeble American imitation of it.

I have lived in places that have real public transport, and we just can't seem to manage it.

 

That's the simple nature of it. Cars get old, a few are kept, most are crushed. Later some become more popular and others fade from memory.

Look a little deeper. What's taking old cars off the road? It's different, nearly unique to each model. You can't get leaded gas anymore, so there's a bunch of engines that will never run right again. Just try getting a windshield for a Type 34 Ghia. A lousy stone chip could potentially make one of those cars unregisterable due to state safety laws. How about a rubber drive coupling for a BMW Isetta? simple age will dry-rot the rubber, so eventually all of these cars will be permanently stuck in neutral.

Then think about the vastly more sophisticated cars on the road today or in the recent past. Do you know if there are any logical timebombs in the various ECUs in a prius? Some software bug; a counter that will just error out after 65535 cycles with no recovery other than replacing the unit? What happens when the soy wiring breaks down and you now need to replace the entire low-voltage harness in the car? Doing that job in 70s cars with relatively few electrical accessories sometimes took 20 man-hours to install an $800 custom replica harness with maybe 30 wires in it. A complete Prius harness is going to have closer to 350 wires in it, so just having one made on a bench is going to cost thousands, never mind installing it. What happens when the hybrid traction battery dies? For now you can get new ones from Toyota, and there is enough demand that there are some aftermarkets. But as the fleet dwindles these options will disappear.

 

Missed the edit window- I should have specified the REAR windscreen on that VW. Not that the front one is much easier to source...

I saw that car (or one of its sisters) at the Detroit Auto Show a few months ago. Gnarly!

 

True.
But I don't think it matters at all.
Car restoration, classic car ownership is a affluent game. You don't get into unless you have the either the skills to do a lot yourself or the money to support a restoration. Which is why TRUE car restorers often find their vehicles as rusted out wrecks that the good intentioned bought hoping to restore it, but then stall when faced with the challenges of the reality.
And we are talking about the FUTURE of car collecting. Nobody said it was going to be cheap or easy. Even today, there are uncountable challenges in getting parts and equipment to restore many cars. BUT...they still do get restored.
Someday will someone struggle to restore a Prius, computer components wires and all? I suspect YES.
I think car collecting, restoration will move forward.
I'll quote Jurassic Park, " Nature Finds A Way" but adapt it to car restoration...Car Restorers...." Find a Way".

 

My friend was driving a '30 Model A over the Chesapeake Bay bridge when he threw a rod. Coasted down to the far end, found a junk yard, paid $25 for an engine and a few hours later (he traveled with a repair kit in that car) he was on his way to the beach. Only problem I remember in 4 years of driving across town every day to school in that car. And when some kids removed a stop sign and some unsuspecting '55 Ford station Wagon turned in front of it, the arched fender had a 8" dent he hammered out. The Ford had its side totally destroyed.

Yes, they were simpler then.

 

With 3D printing and cheap modifiable motherboards, finding parts for old cars could get easier in the future.

 

I agree, but I also wonder if there will be a negative effect from so much technical info tied up in various mechanisms of intellectual property protection. There was a lot less of that surrounding previous generations of cars. As usual, hackers to the rescue...

 

Once they get past the sudden infant death period, electronics tend to be quite reliable. Most computers don't get replaced because they died, but because they aren't capable of running current software. That isn't an issue for an ECU.

There is a robust community of tuners and hackers already out there. Plus, third party ECUs are already a thing.
OPEN ECU -Pi Innovo

 

I drove both a 1929 and 1931 Model A in high school because my Dad thought they would teach me how to deal with automobile mechanics. Sad to say, they taught me everything wrong with that era auto technology.

I love our 2019 Tesla (and previous 2016 Prius Prime, 2010 Prius, and 2003 Prius) because they have taught us how a car should be designed and built. The lack of a Toyota EV in 2019 does not bother me as we own a 2019 (March build) Tesla Model 3.

Toyota did not want my business ... OK. Tesla did and it is on our driveway.

Bob Wilson