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.

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.

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.