Most of the modern steering systems are just hydraulic or electronic power steering which boosts your input with a hydraulic or electric assist motor. You're still moving the mechanical linkage at any time you're steering, it's just that when the car is off the assist motor is disabled and because modern cars have massive tire contract patches, huge weights, and a lot more caster compared to yesteryear, it's damn near impossible to turn the wheels when the car is off and not moving. If you simply disabled the assist, started the car, and let it roll, you would find that it is only maybe 1.5 times harder to turn the wheel than a classic car with skinny tires and larger steering wheels and such. You're still fully controlling the direction the wheels are turned in said systems, the assist motor simply adds force.

Turning my car at low speed with the engine off feels much harder than 1.5 times the turning of an old times car of similar weight. I could hardly make it turn at all when it happened. I don't think I'd be able to make it through a real turn on a road. And I have a small car of about 1000 kg.

You also have to overcome the little but non zero friction of the power steering and your steering wheel is considerably smaller than they used to be.

Yup, cars designed for power steering don't work as well without it as cars specifically designed to operate without power steering. Not just the steering wheel size, the whole steering geometry is probably different.

> it's damn near impossible to turn the wheels when the car is off and not moving.

That was also strongly discouraged on older cars and only possible with big steering wheels and good grip. Just move very slowly and the turning becomes really easy even without assistance (and which is what you were thought when this was still a thing in countries with required driving lessons).

Exactly, just have to move it a bit. I owned an old Fiat when I was a teenager so I was lucky to learn how to drive a car without assists. I prefer the assists most of the time though!

> “There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack”

Are you sure? Fully “steer by wire” vehicles with no mechanical steering link are already in production. The Tesla Cybertruck is the most well-known example.

Toyota/Lexus has also been demonstrating steer-by-wire for a while (Lexus RZ), and it will apparently ship in consumer vehicles later this year.

Are any of these cars available outside the US? From what I've been able to tell, US regulations are much weakest in this regard which is possibly why there are so many words cars there.

The Lexus steer-by-wire tech is expected to ship in Europe later this year:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-lexus-steer-by-wire-sys...

(In some aspects the US automotive regulations are actually stricter than in Europe. For example, in Europe there are some vehicles (eg: Audi) where the wing mirrors are replaced by screens/cameras, but this is not permitted in the US. Adaptive matrix headlights are also not allowed in the US.)

Adaptive headlights are coming soon.

> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body

Electronic throttles became widespread much later than the 80s. Pop the hood of common 2000s economy cars and you’ll find a mechanical throttle linkage.

> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.

All 90s cars I've had or worked on had a real cable from gas pedal to throttle body.

Even fuel injected ones?

Throttle body is a part of fuel injected engines. It was mechanically operated before the electronic throttle bodies.

Yes, the throttle cable operates the opening of the throttle. Downstream of that is the airflow meter which is an input to the fuel injection computer so it knows how much air is going in.

Being able to feel the resistance of the road is valuable, especially in inclement weather. Much more so than with, say, an airplane.