As someone who’s actually in the automotive industry, having been a dealer technician in the late noughties, to working in almost every facet of the industry (except for manufacturing and paint) and now running a restoration shop. I can 100% tell you, that the technology in cars from the mid 2000s was outdated by the late 2000s while the technology from the mod teens is still holding up pretty well halfway through the 20s. Obviously it’s not fantastic. Touchscreen 10 years ago were garbage by today’s standards, but years ahead of where they were 15 years ago. Personally, I think this has to do with the majority of electronics companies getting more or less on the same page about things like the UI and a lot of them tends to run on very similar operating systems (not a computer guy just noticed very similar things about the operating systems) even the software that the cars themselves use is more or less pretty hammered out and uniform these days.

With regards to the tech inside the car like satellite navigation auto dimming headlights, the infotainment system, and things like that, I would say that the newer cars are going to be better for longer until there’s a huge change in the technology that we use in those systems. The first AI automotive assistant or the first holographic display unit. Would make every touchscreen in any car look like something from the Victorian era. But until that happens, I really don’t see the technology and cars becoming as obsolete as quickly as it used to, but make no mistake. It will be obsolete in less than 20 years.

Regarding the cars themselves manufacturing technology has come 1,000,000,000 miles from where it was in the late 90s, materials that were once reserved for Formula One world champion teams are now found in your everyday Lexus. Magnesium wheels, carbon fiber, Kevlar, Bonded monocoque chassis, antilock, brakes traction control, stability management, magnetic shock absorbers. You can get that on almost any base model vehicle from any upmarket manufacturer. And you can get that on the higher end models for the lower tier manufacturers.

Some things have made cars last longer. Some things have made cars more disposable.
A pushrod V8 is almost indestructible, but it’s an incredibly wasteful process to run it. A “sealed for life” transmission works great for the first owner of a car that will own it for 5 to 7 years on the economy cars and 2 to 3 years on luxury cars. But that transmission is going to fail because you can’t exchange the fluid (you can but “they” will tell you it isn’t needed). It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, older cars would last longer, but required more maintenance.

It’s not Survivor bias as others have claimed, it’s 99.99% of the population has no idea about how to correctly maintain a vehicle according to the manufacturer. My old four-wheel-drive for instance, suggests that I check the wheel bearings (tapered style) every time I change the oil, and adjust them if needed (a 20min job per wheel, with a lift and the right tools). Where is a modern four-wheel-drive has a wheel bearing that will go maintenance free for 100,000 miles but must be replaced when it falls out of spec because there are no adjustments to be made. (Sealed ball or roller style).

The same thing goes for the ignition system, I’ve seen plenty of cars that are 50 or 60 years old or more with the original distributor. When a distributor stops working, you replace the wear items inside of it like the cap, rotor, points and/or condenser, most of the time it’s under 40 bucks in parts and maybe an hour of your time. But you do need tools that aren’t used on modern cars and a little bit of know how. Personally, I would prefer doing a distributor refresh every 15 to 20 years then replacing all of ignition coils. A distributor rebuild kit for a 74 Chevy small block is about $36. And don’t forget that distributor powers all eight cylinders. The cost of a single ignition coil on a modern Chevy LS engine is about $54, but you need eight of them.

In short cars have gotten more refined, but are disposable items these days. Where as vintage cars were built before planned, obsolescence was a concept in the automotive world. Where you sold your brand either by being known for being the fastest thing out there the most reliable thing out there. There’s a reason that the Toyota pick up truck is the number one selling truck around the globe. It used to belong to Land Rover, but then the Japanese came along and built something more reliable. Unfortunately, motoring and motoring enthusiast today don’t have a firsthand experience of what it used to mean to build a dependable vehicle, and how important it was for the consumer and the manufacturer to make sure that such vehicles were exactly as advertised and would last a lifetime. Also, the endless need of convenience in today’s society has driven people away from maintaining and servicing their own vehicles, on a much more macro scale from the manufacturers point of view, it cost less in parts to replace an entire unit than it would cost in labor to repair said unit. These vehicles would become modular because you just throw the entire assembly away because one component had failed.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole of automotive design through the last hundred years, I would recommend you start at government regulation and then move onto the rise of the Japanese car industry, post World War II.

I hope that answered your question, if it did great if it didn’t tell me to sod off.