Engines have changed massively over the last few years, increasingly we have smaller capacity engines than previously but because of forced induction and variable valve timing etc they can provide enough power for adequate performance...but importantly for this subject they often lack the low engine speed torque to get the vehicle moving quickly enough for the modern motorist who increasingly zooms away from a standing (or rolling) start and stays under power right until heavy braking is called for.

This lack of low speed torque infuriates me, not because i want to race everyone but because i detest having to abuse the vehicle to get it rolling, hence i tend to avoid things like 1.6 TD's unless fitted to a really light vehicle such as the Citroen C2 VTS we owned.

Coupled with this lack of torque we now have rather high geared first and reverse gears on many cars (and 4x4's), so high in fact that many cars will stall straight out if you try and pull away just on tickover revs, and anything resmbling a hill can call for a hefty bootful of throttle and some clutch slipping to get them going.

I speak from some experience here having driven car transporters for many years and had to perform some fairly extreme controlled manoeuvering whilst fluenty cursing the weak mixtured (emissions) low engine speed lack of torque, and trying not to abuse the cluthc whils keeping the revs low...anyone who's had to do some steep hill starts with these modern cars will know where i'm coming from...indeed some of the popular cars are actually not able to be loaded properly, something we've covered before, especially the satan gearboxed automated manuals.

I'm not criticising everyone and saying they are all at fault, but you can subconciously be slipping the clutch very regularly on some of these cars during quite normal drives, leading to some surprisingly expensive cars having very short clutch lifes.

Of course in all this, weights of cars have increased almost twice for the same class of car with the same cc engine...and with much higher first gear ratios than those earlier cars.

I assure you lorries have gone exactly the same way (except for the gearing), years ago my artics had 14 litre engines, with an 8 speed gearbox geared to 1100 rpm @ 70 mph it was quite possible to start off fully loaded at 38t in 4th gear, the engines having such massive tickover torque that they could literally cope with less that 400rpm and pull away smoothly.

8 gears was more than plenty so tractable were those engines and more durable to boot, you usually only used the top 5, you were in serious terrian to ever need crawler.

Now we have 11 litre engines coupled to 12 speed semi autos geared in top to 55mph @ 1300rpm, but they are so lacking in low speed torque (yes more emissions carp) that you usually need to pull away in 1st because the engine simply can't cope, even 2nd can produce severe clutch slip.

Thats why you all get held up by lorries snailing away from roundabouts, its not that we want to muck everyone about it's that just like cars, the engines are so utterly gutless at low revs that we have to go through probably 5 gears before reaching 20 mph.

Sorry its been such a long post but might be food for thought as to why modern clutches don't last.