“No-one can stop the ol’ demographic conveyor belt, Stahly.”

So said my fellow guest, a former motoring editor 10 years my senior, at a lunch a couple of weeks ago.

Our host was a further 10 years senior again, another life-sentence motoring writer. And no, the latter wasn’t Robbo, who’s a freakish exception to just about everything I’m going to say next.

Given that we were sitting at the senior-senior guy’s coastal weekender, each of us having driven there in comfy German cars that we actually owned, I acknowledged that the things the conveyor belt had delivered us to weren’t at all bad.

But I’d been feeling embarrassed after admitting that, for the past five to 10 years, I’ve been a lot less interested in new cars.

Some long-term readers will understand the significance of this. I wrote my first Wheels story in August 1986, after three years at Modern Motor. New cars and car people were pretty much my whole life for the next 30 years, when I branched off into more general writings.

The conveyor belt notion made a lot of sense. Until then, I’d been figuring I was just turning into a Statler or Waldorf, an achy, angry old fart smugly heckling the motor industry from the balcony seats.

New products kept giving me reasons to be like that. Just a few weeks ago I was loaned a new SUV. It happened to be a PHEV, but that wasn’t an issue. Before I drove off, we just needed to note the odometer.

Pressing the start button didn’t bring the dash to life. “Try shutting the door,” said the guy. Finally, reaping success, “you may need to fasten the seatbelt.”

To read the odometer?

A few days later, my youngest daughter was rejected by her car. She’d parked the current-gen Mazda3 at a friend’s apartment building while she flew home from uni for a week.

Returning to it, a dead antenna module would not recognise the electronic key fob. She could get into the car using the valet key, but then … nothing.

I won’t bore you with the saga of two RACQ tow trucks, baffled automotive locksmiths and the aggrieved owner of the parking space. Suffice to say, if you lose your Mazda key fob or it goes bad, your only option is to have the car towed to a Mazda dealership for reprogramming. Even if you’re in Alice Springs at the time.

This is progress?

1989 Subaru Brumby – Stahly still remembers his test drive

But – ah, the demographic conveyor belt. I find new cars a lot less interesting because, well, they are less interesting – to me. Giant screens and layers of menus and panic-attacktive cruise control and “driver monitoring” cameras are either frustrating, invasive or plain sinister.

Even though I can’t bring myself to say out loud “Meh, they don’t build ’em like they used to”, I’ve certainly thought it. And they don’t build them like they used to.

New cars are a lot safer. They’re also a lot ‘samer’. Greater homogeneity among drivetrain and platform types and the intervention of electronics has shrunk the diversity of driving dynamics and technical interest for someone like me … and my fellow demographic belt-riders.

Right now, I’m thinking back to the 1980s and my road-test drives in, jeez, the Honda City, Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo, Toyota Cressida MX83, Saab 900 Aero (main image, top) and Subaru Brumby. I could have emerged feeling anything from scared shitless to laughing my arse off. I still remember the experience of all of them.

I never had a poster of any of these cars on my wall back then. But – and I guess this is the point – today I could afford and legitimately would love to have any one of those cars in my driveway.

And it would be in the driveway, too, because the 1980s car I’ve already owned for 13 years has exclusive rights to the garage.

This column first appeared in the May 2025 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here.