Are 6th gen Camaros (and other cars) too "digital" to be future classics?
 

What's up guys.....I thought we had a pretty good conversation last week about choosing between a Camaro anda Corvette. Lots of good points for and against, lots of first hand thoughts and opinions, and I thought it was a fun thread discussing something I've thought about a lot. Along those lines I have another question!


The Question:
Are 6th gen Camaros, and really all modern performance cars, too digital, too complicated and too computerized to be a viable, long term classics?



My vested interest?

My 2016 is now 4 years old, a mid model facelift came out in 2019, and the 6th gen as a whole will end in 2023. Do you trade up and stay current or hold on to it and take your chances???


The real wold example:
You could own a 1969 Camaro, today, in 2020, and take it to any Chevrolet Dealership, or mechanic and expect most of them to be able to work on it. Beyond that, most shade tree enthusiasts can work on them, and the skills needed to work on yourself (for the most part) are such that a mechanically inclined person can learn. Not everything, but much of it. As a Camaro fan and owner of almost 30 years, I can do almost everything you could possibly do to a stock 69 Camaro. Maybe not the machine work to the block and heads. That's literally all I couldn't do.

This holds true for a 1979 and 89 Camaro too. By 99, some tech is getting more modern, but honestly most of it is still much closer to '69, than to today.
In 40 years, heck even 20 years from now.....do you guys think the 6th gen cars will still be running well.....even with all the tech and software, and will a Chevy dealer be able to work on them? What about your local garage? What about you and I? Will part be available? C5 Corvette guys have trouble getting body control and brake modules for cars just over 15 years old, they don't have CLOSE to the tech our 6th gens have.



All cars wear out. All parts eventually break. When they do, and they will, where do you see the 6th gen??? Part of my enjoyment in owning my 89 Iroc for 20 years is that getting the parts and knowledge for fixes was never difficult. Sometime actually DOING the work was tough, but I never felt like anything was beyond me being able to get it done.

Fixing a modern car is not any harder than an older car they are just different. The big hurdle now is getting a scan tool you can plug into the car and see what is actually going on with the systems. Those are pricey and most back yard type mechanics won’t have access to them or don’t want purchase one just to have for one car they own in case it breaks as they are spendy. The other hurdle is knowing what the information means on the scan tool when you are having a problem. The code readers you can get cheap only tell you where to look.

yea, a modern car is no different than an older car if you gut the entire thing other than the drivetrain and even that will require proprietary digital tools to play with.

These digital systems do not last forever and they're all closed source proprietary items usually only licensed to be produced by one manufacturer and there is zero incentive for car manufacturers or the licensed manufacturer to continue producing replacement parts vs getting you to buy new. You can't repair the electronic devices. Often they're not using any off the shelf parts and in many cases they go out of their way to make servicing in the field impossible.

Fixing these cars in the future (assuming we still are allowed to drive our own cars and use gas powered vehicles in general) is going to be less about repairing and more about being able to replace all the proprietary stuff with off-the-shelf general purpose devices that can be programmed to do the same functions.

The aftermarket Support will dictate what we can do. You can pretty much buy everything to built your own tri 5 or 69 Camaro.
These 5th and 6th gens have the classic look, so you can see today’s 10 year old or even our children waiting to have that same car dad had 25 years from now.

Well from GMs standpoint as of last year, they were to discontinue the camaro in 2022. May change, but the demand is not so much anymore. People want fuel efficient SUVs. Look what happened to other competitors.

Far as electronics, people ask for the car to basically drive for them cause we are now in a world where most people are lazy. I swear I have fixed an acura back in the dealership days due to customers rear view camera on a 2014 mdx stopped working. Customer had it towed in cause they felt they couldn't back up. That's just pure stupidity, really. Not to mention there were other owners doing the same thing.
Sorry if I'm bitter on this, but I just dont like where cars are going. Wish my camaro had a CD player and radio. That's all. Rest wish I dont really need.

I remember my first PC, it was a 386 using a dos system. Try getting parts for it, might be impossible. No, our cars are not like a pc but, the computer in our cars will eventually need replacing, as well as other electronics. Who will be making these dated parts 30 years from now, is anyone's guess. Because these computers control as many as 40-50 different functions on our cars, we can expect problems to arise. Manufacturers will be reluctant to make electronic parts if there is not enough of a market or profit. Maybe junk yards and their parts in the future, will look entirely different than today.

Sorry, got out of the subject. Yes, new cars are made to break and not last long. They have to profit off of something.

I worked for Sony Music for 17 years. CD, DVD, and Blu Ray sales were my primary form of revenue during that time.

That said, the world has moved on. I don’t ever want to carry that crap around or mess with it again. Spotify for the win.

Someone pulling a 6th gen ZL1 out of a barn 50 - 60 years from now will face a completely different set of problems than someone restoring a `60's / '70's car today.

The biggest hurdle for long term "classic" status of most modern cars boils down to the electronics.
This is not about having the scan tools. programming tools etc. No, the issue is the electronics themselves have a limited life, most components become completely obsolete withing 10-15 years and cannot ever be replaced.

To keep a car running and viable 20-30 years from now is simply not possible, unless there is a huge investment in aftermarket electronics to re-engineer all the components to repair the many complicated electronics that control every aspect of the car.

This is true for ALL electronics across all industries. I work as an electrical engineer in industrial and military/aerospace electronics for over 35 years, guess what, all electronics become obsolete and there is NO going back. Dead is dead. This is something I deal with every day as our devices are 10-15 year life span and even that is VERY difficult to support. Many parts will not be around more than 10 years, tech moves on, period.
Automotive electronics dictates 15 year life span for components, after that, they will typically be phased out and never manufactured again.

That is where modern cars will become obsolete and non-repairable. Not the mechanical aspect, that is not an issue, mechanical parts can be custom machined/fabricated, electronics cannot not. Take a simple processor or memory chip (hundreds in a typical car), when the silicon die is obsolete, there is no replacement and never will be.

Very few cars will ever stand the test of time due to the electronics, the heavy reliant integration of those electronics and irreplaceable nature of electronics in general.

Unless someone opens a die fab to recreate "old" electronic components, there is no way to repair the car. This will not happen as the cost and reverse engineering required would not be justified by any real demand. Also, any given year, the electronics are changing, so no way to cover all the myriad of configurations that evolve even over a 10 year span. Simply not possible.

Once the electronics in the car are dead, especially if it is 20+ years later, that is that, dead is dead.

That is the reality of modern cars. Electronics are a short life span, no way around that. The heavy integration of electronics guarantees the car cannot survive many decades later, unless it a rare, well preserved specimen, even then it may require electronic repair that will simply just not be possible.

I see 6th gen Camaros the same way as most cars that are built today ,they are disposable. Drive them a while ,enjoy, then get out and move on .They will be huge money pits in the long run. They rely too heavily on way to many parts and components to keep them running correctly or running at all.

modern car just requires matching modern tools and reliable reference material. Rest of bits bolt on the same way. Get good at reading electrical diagrams!

The proprietary aspect is a matter of contract with the OEM supplier. At some point that contract runs out. When that happens, the owner of the design and patents, manufacturer, then sells those other companies. The aftermarket companies then manufacture the systems.

So, I would bet that there will be support out there for at least the major, necessary components for some time to come.

Except nobody can build when the basic electronic components (memory, processor, micro, linear parts etc.) are all obsolete. The design is then useless as the parts will not be available. Again, this is an electronic fact and reality.

I could build a body control module from a 1996 whatever brand today, in theory, schematics and everything available, except 90% of the necessary parts to build it no longer exist. Also, far simpler modules in 1996 than today, and fewer of them in the car back then! Today's electronics far more embedded in every car.
Updated replacement parts would not function in the old design, so now you need to redesign the entire module and system to "recreate it", test it, work out all the design bugs. Not going to happen. You would invest millions to build aftermarket modules and not enough market/demand to support it.

Nope, not going to happen.

This is what I do for a living everyday for multi billion dollar companies, redesign and move on. For old electronics in automotive, it would make zero sense.