- is paid for (the single best thing about it)
- is a 13-years-old Mitsubishi Spyder Eclipse that’s done ~50k miles and runs like a dream
- has been a bastion of reliability over the years
- has never failed to start, even when left standing for 6 months due to CV19
- still has great pick up and is fun to drive
My wife has a much newer car, with far more technology in it, backup cameras, satellite radio, tire pressure sensors, Bluetooth, built-in gps, etc. etc. etc. Her car
- has the saving grace of also being paid for
- always seems to have something wrong with it, some minor sensor is broken, or false-alerting, or something. Most-recent is the passenger seatbelt-not-being-worn chiming away, when there’s no passenger.. which apparently needs the $$$ entire seat being replaced.
- does not have the innate reliability of my car,
- has had its battery replaced a couple of times
- has needed to be charged three times now, after being left for a few weeks at a time due to CV19. We just plug it in every weekend now.
- was significantly more expensive (admittedly, bought 7 years later) than my car
I’m not sure, based admittedly on anecdote, that the trend towards ever-more-complex and consequently ever-more-expensive cars is a great one. The cynic in me thinks that minor sensors going wrong and needing major parts replaced to fix them, is a good way for manufacturers to make a fair amount of money on the sly.
Anyway, I can’t see myself replacing my car any time soon, for me they’re a way of getting from A to B, and reliability is the prime concern. The spyder is “nice enough” that I don’t want to risk the reliability.