I always find cars (especially ICE cars) more impressive than more "advanced" technologies like airplanes or spaceships.
To make cars, it not only requires technical sophistication, but also needs to be reliable enough to be operated by ordinary person everyday and be extremely affordable. The more i think about it, the more it sounds like a miracle.
The affordable part isn't a miracle or anything amazing, it's simply the product of huge economies of scale. If airplanes were made in the hundreds of millions per year, they'd be a lot cheaper too (still a lot more than cars because of the materials and labor costs).
But you're right about the reliability aspect: cars really are a lot more reliable than airplanes, in that they don't need lots of frequent maintenance. If you compare modern cars with cars from 50+ years ago, the difference is staggering. Ask your grandparents sometime about how long their cars lasted, and how much maintenance they needed. You can see it in old advertisements from those times: cars needing lubrication every 1k miles, for instance.
> If you compare modern cars with cars from 50+ years ago, the difference is staggering
This - even 30 years ago, if you were doing a 4 hour+ journey, there was a pretty decent chance your car would break down at some point. It would be on your mind. Nowadays, it’s really almost unheard of, to the point where people don’t even think about it.
It really impresses me that a typical ICE can run at thousands of RPM for years on end with relatively minimal maintenance, and then then it's not the pistons and engine block that will fail first.
To make cars, it not only requires technical sophistication, but also needs to be reliable enough to be operated by ordinary person everyday and be extremely affordable. The more i think about it, the more it sounds like a miracle.