This trend will stop. Modern engines are very elastic with wide powerband and adding speeds/gears in the transmission is pointless. At some point your gain of optimizing the rpm becomes negligible (because torque curve is essentially flat) and even with fast transmissions you lose a moment to change gears.


The future will be CVT for a short while, before transmissionless electric motors take over.

Yea it's getting quite ridiculous with 9 speed torque converter automatics when they could have just gone with CVT imo, neither are bombproof. Seems like a marketing gimmick to me, of cuz the argument is lower fuel consumption to meet tightening legislation.

An analogy is like how they are now making 11 speed groupsets for bicycles with electronic shifters and auto trimming. I think they just need something seemingly cutting edge to sell with no real performance benefits.

10 years isn't a long time and we won't all be driving electric auto piloted cars.

In 10 years how many Nuclear power plants would we have to build to fuel all these new electric cars?

As far as the FR-S goes, I think it will still be desirable in 10 years.

Mine will have 100,000 summer driven kilometers on it. :)

Opel GT, 40 years from now. Sports car, wedge front,rare in an affordable car. No more retracting headlights. Sporty, manouverable and light compared to the market offerings in its time.

Ten years from now? Common still in the used market.

Only one way I'll drive an autonomous car....

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/up...s-not-this.jpg

No need to worry, I owned a 10 year old Subaru that had 245,000 km when I sold it. A 2004 Impreza 2.5RS. I sold it in excellent condition and even got good money for it. I didn't even encounter the dreaded head gasket problem. Toyota and Subaru are the most conservative automakers out there when it comes to engineering and design, and after owning vehicles from both, it shows.

Don't see that happening. The average price of gas in 1966 (50 years ago) was $0.32 a gallon. (Multiple sources, Internet). Adjusted for inflation to 2015 that is $2.36.

In 2006, the average price was $3.06 not adjusted for inflation.

And yes, in both of those years we were going to run out of fuel any day now.

"According to the Institute for Energy Research's calculations, the U.S. alone actually sits on 1.442 trillion barrels of recoverable deposits.
That's over 60 times the amount we usually hear about.
This larger number would be enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years."

I think combustion engines will be around longer much past 15 years from now. I guess some younger folks in here never got to read Popular Science magazine and their "popular" flying car theory.

I guess I'm just trying to be this guy in 10 years with my BRZ, all OEM+ and collectible.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKgz5PgrqLk"]Toyota Altezza Modellista intro - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrRv_DxoR-Y"]Toyota Altezza Modellista trailer - YouTube[/ame]

Diamonds are rare, buy them now before it's too late!

My trust in IER is extremely limited, but even if their calculations were correct, the driving force behind switching to electric will (hopefully) be concern about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and resulting climate change, not limited oil supply.

One of the reasons I like the twins was their similarity to my previous car in body shape (Z). As long as you don't go too crazy with the aero, the look should last a while. quite often, it's the aero add-ons that date the cars.

http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2145018e.gif

240Z. Light, minimal and ready to go. A high school teacher bought one new when I was there. We were all drooling over it. Affordable. I wanted one so bad it hurt.
(she was way hotttt: teacher)

When a photon blasts into an object the residual energy has to go somewhere. Usually bumping something out of the way next door.

That. I've still got friction shifters on the downtube.

No one can predict the future so I would simply enjoy your current ride, whatever it might be. With enough TLC and preventative maintenance every car will last for decades.

We are still years away from autonomous driving and I also don't see petrol prices going up drastically any time soon. Cars will continue to become more efficient and if anything we will see an explosion of EV's appear over the coming years. With EV's becoming more and more common the demand on fuel will steadily drop and this in turn will keep fuel prices in check or at the very least slow their increase over the coming years.

Personally I treat every tank like it could be my last. Quite the cathartic experience I must say.

As for speaking to the twins. The non riced out ones that are kept clean and polished will hold up beautifully. Those moded with quality oem/oem+ items will be desirable. At least in my eyes, if I saw an older sports car that looked spotless and was a rolling show case of TRD or STI parts I'd view it as being a very special car indeed.