The problem with the steel in cars isn't that it's too heavy, it's that in the vast majority of cars, the most important structural parts rust away into nothing after 10 or so seasons of winter driving. This is hugely wasteful not only economically, but environmentally. The car companies CAN fix this, but actively chose not to, for obvious reasons.
Once I was told by a mechanic the following: if car companies where the ones liable for fixing your car, the design would look very much different.
Car companies choose what is simple to manufacture, but eventually making it very hard to maintain. If it where not for regulation, they would give you something that has a timer for breaking. That is how little they respect their customers.
Anecdotal (but at this point one of hundreds I've come across): older car had fuel pump accessible through a little sealed hatch. In current car the same pump was integrated into the fuel tank. It went bad. Guess what? You have to remove the whole fuel tank to service it. And that entails taking the exhaust out of the way. Car companies hate you.
> if car companies where the ones liable for fixing your car
Sidenote: this one of the ideas behind Ida Aukens (controversial, and I would say misunderstood) "You will own nothing and be happy": One way to make companies liable is by making them own and maintain what they produce for the entire product cycle, and you only rent these items.
Of course this needs a very healthy and competitive market with effective regulations to prevent eternal enshittification. And maybe it doesn't work when shareholder value is everything that counts.
Fortunately fuel pumps don't fail very often these days and dropping the tank is not a hard job for a mechanic. But I'll admit it's not very fun for a DIYer.
The most idiotic thing I've had to deal with so far was headlight replacement on a Subaru Outback. On the driver's side, you can't get to the headlight from the top. You have to take out the whole front wheel well liner, remove some other things, and then you can GET to the headlight, but it's way back there and you can't even SEE it. So you have to do the job blind and one-handed. I did it ONCE and hated every second of it.
My experience is that cars manufactured in the past 10 years can withstand salty rust belt winters with little or no corrosion. I'm sure metallurgy varies between manufacturers but I think you're underestimating how much practices have improved.
GP is incorrect. Rust is not the issue for avoiding steel.
It is weight. Period. Every group at every mfg is given a weight reduction goal per model line and refresh. Vehicle network systems had a bullet point not of safer, or easier, or redundant, which it is none of those things - but low weight as you can cut a lot of copper out.
And the old aluminum truck frames rotted out even worse. It's not about the metal or really the alloy but how the surface is protected using oxide conversion, better paint, and manufacturing methods which preserve these proactive measures (e.g. dont drill holes after oxide/paint applied.)
The old '61 Mack truck I have is just plain sheet metal and has a lot of rust holes in the cab and body work. My 2001 Pathfinder had a failed strut tower in 2013 from the sheet metal rusting out (well known issue Nissan screwed people with.) Newer Chevy's and so on seem to hold up decently and I hope my '22 CR-V lasts 20 years.
It's not obvious because new cars in 2024 don't have the problems of rust buckets from the 1970's, unless you suppose that happened by accident and not because of competition between automakers.
They have gotten better but even in the '00s rust was still a problem. I had a Ford that got so rusty I had to junk it. Still ran and drove great. Some of the cheaper Asian brands such as Kia and Nissan also still had rust problems in that era. Even Mercedes of that era (W210 chassis) were rustbuckets.
I don't quite follow this logic? I am talking about what happens to cars with steel frames after a decade. Of course new cars aren't rusting out, but a large percentage of the ones made in 2009-2024 most certainly are. In the midwest/northeast US at least.
... If you don't take care of them. It isn't a car company conspiracy, it's the unreasonable expectation that you can treat a vehicle like a microwave and just run it with no thought to maintenance or environment. Mine are going just fine after 15 year with minimal upkeep in one of the harsher winter environments. Fluid film is cheaper than a new car.
Got it treated by Krown rustproofing before the first winter, and spot treated with Fluid Film (lanolin spray) since. If I didn't drive on gravel so often it probably wouldn't need the yearly touch up.
1) better brands are really made... better in many details. I own second BMW, anytime I had a small scratch, got me worried it will eventually rust it all, technician told me not to worry, all outer surfaces are covered in zinc under paint. Compared to cheaper cars I've seen, there are literally many more layers of paint and other stuff before it comes to actual steel (or there is aluminium ie for some Audis).
2) where I come from, in cca eastern Europe with cca harsher winters, all sane folks who value their cars get right after buying get some additional protective layer on the bottom of the car (don't know details, don't live there but its not a trivial process). Easily lasts a decade. Back home during winter there is often salt and other chemistry used on the roads so without that, it would be bad much quicker.
If you live next to sea/ocean, you are screwed though I think, salt in the air corrodes almost everything.
Automakers that build cars for Europe have to make them better. A car will not pass a typical European safety inspection if it has any significant rust. In the USA many states don't have inspections of any kind, and the ones that do are often just emissions, or maybe include a quick check that the tires and brakes are servicable.
Nonsense. Most manufacturers sell exactly the same models in both Europe and North America, with perhaps minor tweaks for things like exterior lighting. Rust is mainly caused by road salt, and salt just isn't as heavily used in most of Europe.
Europe is a big place. You'd be surprised how easy it is to bribe the safety inspectors in some countries.
Just buy a decent quality car and make sure that it is properly undersealed before you takle it anywhere where salt is used on the road. Wash it thoroughly underneath as well as on top at the end of each winter; automatic car washes here in Norway do that for you.
I mean, the alternative is aluminum, but using that means your car is effectively totaled after a collision bad enough to damage the frame. I'll take steel, thank you.
