Classic News

ECUS are the new terminal rust; Matt Tomkins has a solution

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The June 1980 issue of Practical Classics (issue no 2, in fact) contains a detailed guide to replacing the sills on your MGB. At that time the MGB was still in production (just) and the oldest examples were only eighteen years old. It’s hard to imaging now a car of that age requiring (or receiving) such major reconstructive surgery. Rust is becoming a far less prolific danger to the roadworthiness of a modern car. It’s rare, even, to see a rusty modern car in a scrapyard; yet we continue to scrap cars at an alarming rate. Electronics are the biggest killers of cars nowadays. Cars have become like washing machines and televisions: a series of circuit boards and electronic control units that are ‘sealed for life’ and must be thrown away and expensively replaced. Our Ask Our Experts pages this month include a letter from Joe Smith who had been quoted £1000 for a replacement ECU for his 2001 VW Golf, putting the car in grave danger of being discarded through being deemed uneconomical to repair.

I wonder, then, if there’s a solution? What about a generic, programmable ECU that could be wired as required via a pin-out diagram and ‘mapped’ via a software sharing site at modest cost? Manufacturers could load maps onto this when old components become obsolete or tech wizards of the next generation could write scripts that others could download like a new song. When James Walshe has a problem with his Smart Roadster, it can be plugged in and repaired remotely from Germany. What happens when Mercedes stop supporting this? There has to be a way the classic movement can capture the imaginations and ambitions of a generation of computer experts to give a new lease of life to the modern classics of today and tomorrow.