I think I'm becoming a neo-luddite. (A philosophical rant about simplicity and fear of the unknown.)

This philosophy makes sense to me. My autocross car is a 99 Miata sport, as basic as possible, and reliable as a hammer. It left Japan with two options, power steering and a hardtop. The dealer added AC. Picked it because it would be cheap to run and hard to break. 
 

My daily/backup autocross and track car is an 08 civic, right in that sweet spot. The one potential weakness in the early eighth generation civics is that the block castings were very thin.

The water jackets will leak in some of them and require an engine replacement. That's a good example of how the quest for lighter weight to improve efficiency ended up with a flaw.

We recently bought a 2021 Expedition. I'm very apprehensive about owning it, but it was the best option for our needs and eliminated one vehicle from the fleet. Used car prices are so high that I had to buy a newer and more complex vehicle than I wanted so I could finance it. 

ddavidv said:

This is a topic I've had a real epiphany over in the last decade. I found myself gradually losing interest in wrenching. It had become far less fun than it used to. It wasn't that I couldn't learn/adapt to lots of new systems, but that I had to. The problems I had to fix were no longer just leaking seals or worn out rotating parts but all kinds of little solenoids and vacuum controlled valves that took lots of time to diagnose and even locate on the car. And everything was so tightly packaged I had to dismantle so much of the car just to reach things.

-Snip-

I fall in this category too. I honestly don't mind working on mechanical things, I really just hate the packaging of modern vehicles.

I worked for a defense contractor building and maintaining UAV's for 10 years. Part of what I did was R&D support work on the aircraft when we were developing new systems, platforms, or retrofitting old ones. There was more then once where an engineer showed up with a "part that worked in CAD" and I had to explain to him why the design seemed fine, but would be a nightmare to maintain except at a major service interval. Sometimes I had to show them why so they got the big picture.

It feels like modern cars, despite their longer life and technical advances, aren't meant to be maintained. They were designed to be slammed together as efficiently as possible and that's it. I really don't want to repack wheel bearings every 10k miles, adjust condenser points, or adjust the float on a carburetor. I just want to change the oil without spilling all over the front axle, clean the EGR without disassembling the entire drivers side of the vehicle, or put a whatever size wrench on the belt tensioner instead having to get a special tool.

Oh, I also don't want to pay two grand for a headlight or taillight. Seriously, stop that.

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

I straddle the fence on this. It depends on the use case and the individual. I currently have 2 vehicles, 2024 CRV and a 2011 Escalade ESV. The CRV is used daily, groceries, kids, run around town. The Escalade is used when the other car is busy and to tow my camper. The Escalade saw 4,000 miles last year. 

I want all of the technology in the CRV, I replaced a 2020 CRV with it because it needed maintenance and the new one had a couple of little features that were nice (notably wireless Apple Car play, please don't hate me). In 3 years that car will go back to Honda and I'll probably have a 2027, I don't care about long term maintenance because the only thing I will ever change on that car is the windshield wipers. 

TLDR 1: I love the new tech, don't care about maintenance

On the Escalade I am constantly fixing silly things due to complexity, it is hard to work on because you need a computer for anything, it has 145K miles so things break. I hate this truck because it doesn't fit my use case. I don't drive it enough miles to care about the 4 heated and ventilated seats, the VVT and cylinder deactivation are more things to break, I constantly worry that the next thing that breaks will basically total the truck.

Seriously considering a square body or another GMT400 to replace it, maybe an early 2000's Chevy.

TLDR2: I hate this technology and I never want to work on it again (I do want fuel injection and engine control though)

I have owned one new car in my life.  My parents bought me and my sister a new sensible car after college graduation.  She graduated in 92 and bought a chevy blazer.  I graduated in 96 and got an Impala SS.  The point of getting that car (other than I REALLY wanted it) was that it was a B-body that had been in production for 6 years in that body style, an engine which had been around for 4 years based on a design that had been around for 50 years, and a chassis that had remained mostly unchanged since 1971 in Chevys and 1964 in BOPCs.

Imagine being a new 6.0L Powerstroke owner and discovering a $14,000 EGR, head gasket, and oil cooler repair at 75k miles.

I like to wait until I can google what dies.

06 Chevy Express
97 Lincoln Mark VIII
83 Corolla
67 LeMans
66 Bonneville

Yes, a strong point of this argument may be that 15 to 20 year old vehicles are The Sweet spot. By that time, the research is done and known failures have been learned.

After all, the Prius I recommended was the most technically advanced car of its time but that was 20 years ago.

I also predict, and Hope, that in about 10 more years there will be an interesting hack industry keeping Tesla 3 and Tesla Ys on the road. So many are being made right now.

Guy I work with usually churns over a 5 year old car every 3 years, currently a 18 Tahoe and he's had nothing but problems with this one.

That's hard to stomach when you have a $650 a month payment, which I think is a lot of what's wrong with the newish car economy right now. Having a big ish payment and repairs sucks. When at 06 Audi is more reliable and you have more confidence it's kinda sad

He's currently looking at gmt800 series trucks/avalanche for a replacement 

alfadriver said:

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

Thats not always the calculus though. Commonly its 10 $500 dollar repairs or 10 $1500-2500 repairs.

My daily is a 2009. That's about the perfect age. Minimal fluff. Not necessarily easy to work on but very much DIYable. I very much doubt I will ever buy a car newer than 2014. I have two of them and they are dependable but they are also base models with minimal fluff. 

My play cars are a little older than that because I find them much more enjoyable to work on. 

Antihero said:

Guy I work with usually churns over a 5 year old car every 3 years, currently a 18 Tahoe and he's had nothing but problems with this one.

 

That's hard to stomach when you have a $650 a month payment, which I think is a lot of what's wrong with the newish car economy right now. Having a big ish payment and repairs sucks. When at 06 Audi is more reliable and you have more confidence it's kinda sad

 

He's currently looking at gmt800 series trucks/avalanche for a replacement 

This is a smart man, hearing a lot of this exact story lately.

The newer GM trucks are bad (im a GM guy) Lifter failures on the LTs are more common and more catastrophic than LS. The 6 speed likes to take out converters and kill the rest of the trans, the 8 speeds are bad out of the box, 10 speeds seem to be better, but have problems the Ford version doesnt. Carbon build up on all the DI GMs is a problem. There is no question, a non AFM LS GMT800 is more reliable and cheaper to maintain than, an LT powered truck, and it isnt even close.

For me its new enough to have a warranty so I don't have to work on it or old enough to be easy to work on. 2017 tundra seemed like the sweet spot for me, still has the NA V8 instead of the twin turbo 6 and new enough to get a carmax warranty so I don't have to work on it at all for at least 4ish years

Maybe I'm wrong but I think reliability has dropped in the last few years.

I said to my son recently, I sure miss the days of being able to buy Firefly/Sprint/Swift with a burnt valve,  burning oil for a few hundred bucks, replacing the valves, doing a re-ring with the engine in the car and having a perfectly serviceable beater for under $500. And it's not just the money, but how cheap and available parts were and how easy they were to work on. Modern conveniences are nice, but when they break they're not only a pain in the arss to fix but a pain in the wallet too.

Like the first post, I'm terrified of modern cars and electrical problems now. PW's Sonic is ten years old, looks and drives like a new car, and because I can't get electrical parts for it, it sits in front of my shop, while she drives it's replacement.

Peabody said:

Like the first post, I'm terrified of modern cars and electrical problems now. 

I am more scared of painfully expensive repair bills for engines and trans. My friend had a GM trans it cost $6k for a reman trans (installed). I puked a 4L60E and literally was back in business for mid 3 figure money. (Doing the R&R myself). A junkyard engine for the Caddy is $4K plus, literally an engine or trans failure would total the vehicle.

For a long, long time I refused to own a car made after the year 2000. Then we got a deal on a used IS-F. 415hp, heavy sedan that pulls 22mpg in mixed driving. It made me a believer in carefully selected modern cars. 

Just crossed 150k in our 2017 Volvo. Supremely comfortable highway cruiser, great MPG, decent enough power, in that 150k (aside from consumables) it's needed a starter. That's it. 

That being said, I have been eyeing a late 90's Volvo wagon, for all the reasons everyone else has mentioned

I am really on the fence with this. 

I daily a newer car, so does the wife. I have two much older projects. The key is the balance of how easy something is to maintain VS how often it breaks. 

The two older vehicles always need something. They are never perfect, and they mostly soldier on. The newer stuff needs less, is actually A LOT easier to maintain, and are much more efficient. Of course, they are more expensive, but the trade-off is I don't have to worry about all the weird stuff breaking that will keep me from getting to work as much as the older stuff. 

That said, a good, older car that's dependable and affordable is the best thing ever. It's like hitting the lottery. 

I am a firm believer in this talk track.

My DD is a 2019 but it's literally the most basic form of the car possible. Cloth seats, No Sunroof, Manual. The only thing that is fancy is the front crash prevention system. I would have gotten an 18 to avoid it but finding an awd 6 speed wagon with no options is a very short list of available pool to choose from. So when one came up I jumped on it. 

The rest of my cars are pretty basic. 96 mitsubishi mirage track car which I can literally reach through the engine compartment and everything is manual. 05 Mitata Turbo. Nuf said. 06 Evo. Pretty complicated for the era but really not bad. And 05 honda element. 225K miles and going. 

I can afford zzz germans but man they scare me. 

My problem I have, and I'm looking at you Ford, is the planned obsolescence. Ford has always basically been 9 years after production for anything you can still purchase through Ford without having to rely on Vintage or a place like Green Sales. Now with all the electronics, I'm seeing even less time from end of production to get parts. Even then I see roadblocks to getting them operational through programming that is "no longer supported". Nor is the manufacturer willing to give up their "intellectual property" argument to keep vehicles on the road.

Opti said:

alfadriver said:

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

Thats not always the calculus though. Commonly its 10 $500 dollar repairs or 10 $1500-2500 repairs.

 

Usually at the same basic timeframe.

alfadriver said:

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

I suspect it's not about the price, nor the number of repairs.  It is about what people perceive as reasonable.

Based on past experience we expect that certain things will wear out or fail.  Seals, rubber suspension bits, bearings, etc.  We have an idea about what those will cost and know whether or not we plan to undertake the repair ourselves.  Starter failed at 100k?  Sounds about right.

We do not expect that the radio (infotainment) will fail and then render a vehicle inoperable.  No one would have guessed that the fancy brakes would mean nearly $10k in parts for a brake job someday.  

No doubt new cars are faster, safer, more efficient, and more reliable.  While many have posted here that 200-2010 seems like the sweet spot I am sure that there is someone out there who wishes he had a knob to control his own timing advance.

I think what we are seeing is that, since cars don't rust out after 3 years or need a complete everything overhaul at 60k miles, they are lasting long enough for really weird issues like wiring and electronics issues to take hold.

Kind of like people are dying of cancers in their 80s because they didn't die of heart disease in their 40s or some random virus in their teens.

I think the other thing we're seeing is people like me who were once competent mechanics are not staying current, and losing confidence in their ability fix their own vehicles 

pushrod36 said:

alfadriver said:

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

I suspect it's not about the price, nor the number of repairs.  It is about what people perceive as reasonable.

Based on past experience we expect that certain things will wear out or fail.  Seals, rubber suspension bits, bearings, etc.  We have an idea about what those will cost and know whether or not we plan to undertake the repair ourselves.  Starter failed at 100k?  Sounds about right.

We do not expect that the radio (infotainment) will fail and then render a vehicle inoperable.  No one would have guessed that the fancy brakes would mean nearly $10k in parts for a brake job someday.  

No doubt new cars are faster, safer, more efficient, and more reliable.  While many have posted here that 200-2010 seems like the sweet spot I am sure that there is someone out there who wishes he had a knob to control his own timing advance.

Or when the cost of a repair gets precariously close to the value of the vehicle.

The tough one is many of the issues with modern vehicles isn't the cost of the actual repair, but the time needed by the tech to figure out what actually needs to be repaired. 
Part: $100
R&R of part: $150
Diagnostic time needed to figure out which part needs R&R: $1500.

No matter how you look at it that's a hard pill to swallow.

alfadriver said:

So one thing that seems apparent- people would rather do 10 $500 repairs than 1 $5000 repair. 

Yes. I also don't expect my not even 10 year old car to need a 5k+ engine overhaul.

In reply to Peabody :

I don't think it's a confidence thing. I think it's a memory of how easy cars used to be to work on. Now you open the hood and you can't see the engine. Just the thought of having to remove so many parts to make a repair makes you go back to working on old stuff. 

My Touareg had a leaking oil cooler. Repairs required removing most of the top of the engine to get to it. I paid a shop to fix it. My 66 Falcon doesn't have an oil cooler. Neither does the 26 REO. Fewer parts = fewer chances of a failure and an easier repair when it does fail.

Add to that the fact that electrical repairs are always the hardest to diagnose and find. My 09 Hummer has miles of wire in it. The wiring diagrams go on for pages and it's a fairly simple vehicle. The REO has 40' of wire in it and the Falcon probably doesn't have much more. 

Toyman! said:

My play cars are a little older than that because I find them much more enjoyable to work on. 

If you're looking for simplicity, it doesn't bet much better than something like an early 60s Falcon, or maybe a Plymouth Valiant, or a GM A body (Chevelle, Tempest, Cutlass, Buick Special).  You give up a lot of modern conveniences, but it will get you from point A to point B with minimum fuss.