For all of my life, to now, it was standard 'guy' practice: a (male) friend or relative shows of the new (or new to him) set of wheels. The standard walk around and running critiques ALWAYS ended with a look at the engine, even if one was a little fuzzy on all the stuff there. Always.
Older brother Jerry came home a few months ago with a brand new midsized SUV that is really fun to drive, fuel efficient, and very well designed inside and out. Under the hood: a big plastic cover hiding our access—even view—of any of the workings, other than dip stick and oil filler hole. They don't want us to even try to top off coolant. For the included 100K mile waranty period taking him up to the first scheduled tune up, he is discouraged from getting even lightly involved in any of the intimacies he shared with every vehicle he has owned since his '47 Ford coupe as a teenager in the late 1950s.
We used to HAVE TO check plugs, points, condenser (and valve adjustments if you had non hydraulic lifters) every 15,000 miles or so, before say 1985. They often needed attention sooner, and rarely needed no adjustment at the specified interval.
It is nice to now be able to not worry about astoundingly more reliable and durable cars, but is being completely isolated from their main workings all good? Younger readers of both sexes, and most women in mine and previous generations, may see it as unmitigated progress, and accuse me of being sentimental for an era when I could be the hero by popping a stranger's distributor cap and running a matchbook cover between the points to clean them and get him or her on their way again... (Remember matchbooks? Remember distributors you could find, or open without any tools?) Well, yes there IS a bit of sentiment, but there is more, too. Stay tuned, so to speak.
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Who says it's guy stuff? I did the same, i.e., walk around like I knew what I was looking at at my neighbor's new Saturn. I even told him where the dealer was (my friend had one) and he was quite impressed. We're just a socieity of phonies, I guess. But perhaps it's really being polite requisite Q & A about your friends' and neighbors' new and costly acquisition.
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