Question: What 40-Year-Old European Car Would You Daily Drive?

Truly long-term reliability seldom gets mentioned in consumer tests these days, but at the moment, we're effectively living in an era when decades-old vehicles can still be seen on the road in daily use. As a point of reference, you never saw a 40-year-old car being used as a daily driver in the 1980s, but plenty of cars from the early 1980s—like the Volvo 240 here—can still be seen on the roads every day. So choosing to drive a 40-year-old car is not as impractical an idea as it once way.

Speaking of Volvos, what European car, 40 years or older, would you trust as a daily driver? Are there any that you've tried that you could see yourself using every day, even if you drive a modern car now?

You're spoiled for choice when it comes to German cars, as there are still plenty of W123 Mercedes-Benz sedans, coupes, and station wagons on the road, and you're guaranteed to see one almost daily in most parts of the country if you spend just a couple hours looking in traffic. The R107 SL roadster is in equally generous supply on the two coasts, benefitting from remarkable build quality, while the W116-generation S-Class is also a common sight in some parts of the country.

Plenty of Porsche 924, 928, and 911 models can be seen used as daily drivers, but BMW cars from this time period are a little harder to spot, perhaps with the main exception of the E24 6-Series, which is far older than it looks. Audis of that vintage are mostly absent from the daily-driving scene, but some Volkswagens older than four decades are certainly still used as daily drivers.