arrow wrote:No need to get defensive.
I'm not saying that the labor on the cars was bad, but I do think that the materials used during that time especially were very cheap.
It's not cheap materials, it wasn't as good of a choice to use certain materials on the car over another material. It's a matter of only 4 years at most for the cars, that's not really much of a difference between one car series being retired compared to another. Look at the R38s, they are only two years younger than the R32s yet they will be retired at most two years before the R32s, a four year difference between total life spans isn't enough difference to me to judge whether the car series was better than the other. Simply not enough time differential.
Look around at everything today...you rarely see metal anymore, everything is plastic because it is light and cheap, but of course it usually won't last as long.
We just have different opinions about quality, that's all.
Light, cheap, easy to replace, easy to install, easy to work with. Why should the transit authority go with metal just to please a few people who prefer the "old" style? It's simply better. And the weight of the cars are reduced by using plastics and composites over metal, that in turn produces less stress on the ancient el structure.