A scoring instrument for buying a car that doesn't watch you and that you can actually fix. Built from the argument in Old Cars & The Analog Resistance, then extended to cover what that argument leaves out. Everything resolves from a model year, a spec sheet, or a recall database, from your desk.
The reference set, and the fastest way to calibrate. It spans the full range, covers every marque the video names (Bronco, Land Cruiser, Tacoma, Volvo, Land Rover, Porsche, Mercedes), and includes ordinary appliances as a control group. Switch views, sort any column, load a car, then change whatever you disagree with.
MSRP and market are reference only. Neither one feeds the score, and neither can veto a car. An expensive car is not a worse car; it is a budget question, and yours to answer. Figures are approximate 2026 values, rounded, and move constantly.
An earlier version of this page claimed the middle was empty. That was wrong, and the way it broke is the interesting part. The claim was that every car without an embedded modem scores 65 or above, every car with one scores 43 or below, and nothing lands between. Two deliberately built test cases falsified it.
The test: hold the vehicle constant, change only the modem. The 2013 4Runner and the 2020 4Runner are the same truck. Same body-on-frame chassis, same naturally aspirated port-injected 4.0 V6, same parts supply, same Techstream diagnostics. The 2013 scores 78. The 2020, with a live 4G modem, scores 56. The 2015 Wrangler JK scores 80; the 2019 JL, same truck plus a modem and a security gateway, scores 55. Both land inside the band that was supposed to be empty.
So the corrected finding is narrower and more useful. The modem really is worth roughly twenty-two points, and it really does arrive with over-the-air updates, a remote path in, and subscription gating. But it does not by itself push a car into the basement. What put the 2022 Bronco at 43 and the F-150 at 36 was the modem plus a fragile turbo-DI drivetrain and worse access. A connected car that keeps a simple engine and stays wrenchable lands in the middle, and that is exactly what a modern 4Runner is. The middle is thin, not empty, and it is where the honest compromises live.
One manufacturer is still holding the line, and it is Honda. The 2024 Civic scores 63, roughly thirty points above every other 2024 car here, because its telematics unit talks over WiFi and your phone rather than its own cellular connection. No embedded modem means no over-the-air updates, no remote path in, and nothing gated behind a subscription. The Civic ladder reads 77, 65, 63 across twenty years: a slow drift rather than a fall, and the only gentle line on this chart. Whether that survives the next redesign is a different question, but as of now you can buy a new car that is not on a leash.
And the ceiling is exactly what you would guess. A 1957 Bel Air scores a clean 100. Nothing to transmit, nothing to update, nothing to plug into, and a reproduction parts catalogue thicker than the factory one. It is also a car with no airbags, no ABS, drum brakes at all four corners and a steering column pointed at your sternum, which is why it carries three vetoes. The top of this scale is not a recommendation. It is a definition.
Luxury fell furthest, and it is not close. Three nameplates run the length of this table. A 1991 Mercedes 560SEL scores 87; the 2025 S-Class scores 16. A 1991 BMW 325i scores 94; the 2024 330i scores 26. A 1991 Lexus LS400 scores 87; the 2024 LS500 scores 33. Same badges, same market position, drops of 71, 68 and 54 points. The pattern is not subtle: the features that sell a premium car in 2026 are precisely the ones this rubric penalises, because a flagship is where every manufacturer ships its cameras, its subscriptions and its remote access first. The cheapest car in this whole set, a $7,000 1984 Toyota Pickup, outscores all three modern flagships by more than sixty points.
The 4Runner ladder is the cleanest thing in this table: 2013 at 78 (no Safety Connect), 2016 at 75 (Safety Connect fitted, killed by the 2022 3G sunset), 2020 at 56 (live 4G). One truck, three configurations. A dead modem costs three points. A live one costs twenty-two.
| Score | Band | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | True analog | Almost certainly pre-1996. Passes on principle, not on technicality. Realistically a second vehicle. |
| 65–84 | Analog-leaning | Daily-drivable with real compromises. Usually private by accident of age rather than by design. |
| 45–64 | Transitional | The computer arrived but the leash hadn't. Fixable if you buy the right tool. |
| 0–44 | Connected | A modern car. It may wear the costume convincingly; it still reports home. |
Fourteen criteria, scored one at a time. Each carries a pointer to where the answer lives online, so a candidate can be fully scored before you contact a seller. Your answers are saved in this browser and in the page URL, so you can bookmark a scored car or send it to someone.
The video doesn't raise any of these, which is its biggest omission. A car can score 100 and still be the wrong car. Tick anything true; one tick outranks the whole score. Price is deliberately not here.
Safety. Deliberately kept out of the score and put in the vetoes instead, because averaging it in would let a strong analog score paper over a car with no airbags. It shouldn't be a tradeable point. It should stop the purchase or not.
Price. Shown in the table, outside both the score and the vetoes. A car is not worse for being expensive, so price never costs a point and never disqualifies anything. It is there because the numbers are interesting on their own: a 1966 Bronco went from $2.4k to $85k while a 1991 LS400 went from $42k to $7k, and that divergence has nothing to do with how analog either one is.
Whether the car is any good. This is the one worth internalising. A 1978 Cutlass scores 92, third from the top. It is a smog-choked malaise-era sedan making about 140 horsepower from a 5.7-litre V8, with vague steering and drum brakes at the back, and almost nobody would choose to drive one daily. It scores 92 because it is genuinely unwatched and genuinely fixable, which is all this page measures. A high score means the car will not report on you and you can repair it yourself. It does not mean the car is fast, comfortable, safe, efficient, or pleasant, and the 1984 Toyota Pickup two rows above it at 96 was a $7,000 truck. Analog is a property, not a compliment.
Electric drivetrains. The Longevity section is written around combustion engines, so an EV scores oddly there. A Tesla's motor genuinely is the mechanically simplest drivetrain in the set, and it earns full marks for that, which flatters it. What that section can't see is a sealed structural battery, and Repairability is where that shows up instead.
The specific example. This rubric scores a model. It cannot score the one car in the listing, which is what a pre-purchase inspection is for. Research picks the model; the PPI picks the car.