If not taken care of, they will usually fail pretty quickly. A car burring oil is a disaster waiting to happen for a driver who doesn't pay attention to the oil level. And in the long run, will fail anyways as the oil sludges up its internals.
There are some people that do take really good care of their old cars. In fact, to own an old car for an extended period of time, you generally have to pay attention to it. I'd rather some bad apples slip through the cracks than the government getting involved and cracking down on everyone.
Also, new cars, with their aluminum blocks and heads, very precise engineering, and planned obsolescence, will fail much more quickly and easily than older cars as they age. And even fi they don't, they will become un-economical to maintain with the sophisticated and expensive parts required to keep them running. This issue is resolving itself it if ever was an issue.
My argument would be for the EPA to back off and not get involved unless something is actually a problem. A small number of people messing with the emissions systems of their own cars is not going to cause a measurable problem. Also, once car emissions get good enough, there should be no reason to come up with better ones as you will be spending a ton of money for miniscule gains per the law of diminishing returns. However, the EPA and other governing bodies have become bent on constantly pushing the envelope even when it does not need to be pushed anymore. Modern cars and even 10 year old ones are actually very clean. So clean in fact that jurisdictions that had programs to check if cars emission control systems were still working (every 2 or so years for older cars) could not use their emission measuring devices (which worked on older cars) on the newer cars because their emissions had become too low for them to detect. Note that these programs checked that cars complied with the emissions they were manufactured to meet when they were brand new, not new standards. As a result, the emissions checks for those cars became a matter of plugging them in and seeing if they had any "Check Engine" fault codes active.
If not taken care of, they will usually fail pretty quickly. A car burring oil is a disaster waiting to happen for a driver who doesn't pay attention to the oil level. And in the long run, will fail anyways as the oil sludges up its internals.
There are some people that do take really good care of their old cars. In fact, to own an old car for an extended period of time, you generally have to pay attention to it. I'd rather some bad apples slip through the cracks than the government getting involved and cracking down on everyone.
Also, new cars, with their aluminum blocks and heads, very precise engineering, and planned obsolescence, will fail much more quickly and easily than older cars as they age. And even fi they don't, they will become un-economical to maintain with the sophisticated and expensive parts required to keep them running. This issue is resolving itself it if ever was an issue.
My argument would be for the EPA to back off and not get involved unless something is actually a problem. A small number of people messing with the emissions systems of their own cars is not going to cause a measurable problem. Also, once car emissions get good enough, there should be no reason to come up with better ones as you will be spending a ton of money for miniscule gains per the law of diminishing returns. However, the EPA and other governing bodies have become bent on constantly pushing the envelope even when it does not need to be pushed anymore. Modern cars and even 10 year old ones are actually very clean. So clean in fact that jurisdictions that had programs to check if cars emission control systems were still working (every 2 or so years for older cars) could not use their emission measuring devices (which worked on older cars) on the newer cars because their emissions had become too low for them to detect. Note that these programs checked that cars complied with the emissions they were manufactured to meet when they were brand new, not new standards. As a result, the emissions checks for those cars became a matter of plugging them in and seeing if they had any "Check Engine" fault codes active.