I totally agree. This isnt just a Nissan issue, nor any single design/engineering choice. Some are just less shitty than others ATM. They're all headed down the shitter. I don't want to imply otherwise. And a rektoning is brewing. People are going to be uber fucked in the coming years in the US given how absolutely automotive dependent most of us are here. It's one massive shit show that has been in the works for decades.

I feel awful for technicians and have always respected them highly. Pretty soon you'll need to be an engineer or computer scientist just to work on the fucking things.

I can't recall the man's name, but he started as an automotive technician and went back to school for engineering. He works at one of the manufacturers as an engineer now and said be frequently butts heads with the other engineers who have never actually maintained or repaired vehicles. This seems obvious but it seems to be totally lost on the people making these decisions. No one wants a 50-100k car that can't be reasonably maintained or repaired. It's ridiculous.

And I'm not downplaying the role of government either. A lot of the bullshit is nonsense regulation.

On a side note, I recently thought about the average car payment (I think it's 700 per month now? Some 1000+), and decided that I can put some serious money into maintenance, repair, and life extension and still be WAY ahead of people buying these vehicles. I recently convinced a guy at work to buy an old beat up $400 van from a co-worker. He's been driving it for 6 months with no major issues that I know of. Congrats bro, you just saved yourself at least $400 per each of those months compared to the advice everyone else was giving you. He could probably scrap the damn thing for that.

The idea of not fixing a car because it would cost more than the value of the car is breaking in my opinion. If it's otherwise mechanically sound, you're probably better off these days.

I compare it to all of the disposable junk that's been produced since like the 70s. That hasn't gotten better. Phones weren't always disposable and now they are. When their smartphone has an issue they don't say "I guess I need to take it to the repair shop" they say "I guess I need to finance another $1200 smartphone". I'm not kidding when I say I've heard people say, "I should get a new car", instead of getting it repaired. The reckoning isn't going to come by outrage, it's going to come through competition. And I think it's a race to the bottom. They won't stop until every part is a custom proprietary injection molded plastic piece only designed to last for 25k miles, then you just buy another. Mechanics already don't repair cars, they plug a computer in, read a book, and throw parts at it until it works. The consumer can't afford a real repair. We've seen this on the Ford diesel engine side. Some shops have finally started casting parts that are obsolete, but are sold for more than double the value of the vehicle. A 200k mile 7.3L might be worth $5k if it's clean in a decent area. A replacement cast front cover or cylinder heads can set you back $3-5k. Great example: Transmission cooler lines are unobtainable for my truck, their is a shop selling home-made replacements for $400/kit. Great kit, great guys, great parts, but the slippery slope is behind us.

That was my backstory sort of. I'm one of like 3 guys who've ever professionally (and actually) reverse engineered 7.3L ECU firmware. Originally to help myself and others out, then got hired to build and run the department. that was a choice I made to put almost 10 years of my life into. Who else can do that?

All of this is why I believe there will be a market for older stuff. Will it make a big difference? Nah, but it'll be cool for people like us I think. I'm probably willing to spend 5k to fix something worth 5k, depending on context. But I understand that's a rare POV and I have experienced parts slapping for sure. Dealing with it right now.

As for the disposable nature of it, I hate that for environmental reasons, but it's made much worse by the ever increasing costs. It's not like we're paying a lot less for a car that lasts 5 years. They're expensive as fuck with declining overall value, in my opinion.

I'd actually love to see open source vehicles. But that's one of those things where my grandfather would have said "wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which fills quickest"

Yeah I think it's a hard place to be in. I love my truck, it's my baby, i've but a retarded amount of money into it, but it still won't go 1000 miles without needing some repair. I'ts never left me stranded, but man I wish I wouldn't cost me so much to drive. But it's a big heavy 400hp toy. I have had a few other daily drivers but have all had major issues and I let them go cheap because I don't have the facilities to do transmission or engine swaps where I live now. I'm definitely getting tired of repairing rusty, clapped out junk. But that's all I can afford XD

XD

I don't think that's really an opinion, although I'm too lazy to pull up stats. I can only speak for pickups, and the same models available now have only increased in price, feature for feature since released. And yeah, it seems like they are depreciating much quicker than they were.

There are some projects that offer FOSS drivetrain management systems, similar to the bitaxe community. Some make boards, some sell complete ECUs, some make comercial software on top of the free stuff etc. Speeduino was one of them. Megasquirt and a few others do similar. They're more for offroad/racing applications. Like don't expect your entertainment center to work but you might get a 4L60e transmission to shift.