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Comment by allenrb | Hacker News Reader

New cars are a fool’s game for most people, imho. Unless you just insist on having the newest thing, they rarely make sense. Couple that with the relentless electronic gadgetry and phone-home surveillance and I may never own a car produced after ~2020. Our current stable:

2007 Mazdaspeed 3, just keeps going. All buttons, no screens.

2016 Porsche Cayman, one small multifunction screen, display only, no touch. Buttons for the very few “features” present on the car.

2016 Ford Transit Connect. 200k miles. Just goes. One small screen, doesn’t interfere with anything critical.

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This is just a silly statement. Your 2007, 2016, and 2016 vehicles were all new cars in 2007, 2016, and 2016.

There are plenty of 2020-era cars that are, so far, remarkably reliable and cheap to maintain and repair. It's simply that Volvo and Polestar are quite bad at making vehicles.

Sure but if they bought those cars in 2010 and 2019, then there would've been plenty of time for quality issues to show up in those models.

And plenty of time spent in dealerships waiting for recalls or keeping the service record pristine

Make survivor bias work for you

To clarify, I was making two independent points and didn’t do a good job of separating them. These being:

1. It frequently makes sense to buy older cars for several reasons (cost, common problems being recognized and understood).

2. I’m not interested in anything after ~2020 or so, not because they aren’t built well, but because they include too many “features” that I refuse to own. Two-way telemetry, that sort of thing.

> New cars are a fool’s game for most people, imho.

I’d have agreed with you in the past, but I just bought a new car for the first time. I wanted a compact pickup - there were basically none produced for a decade from 2012-2022 - the ones from before this gap are questionable safety-wise, and now either are falling apart from rust, or going for a hefty premium because there aren’t many enthusiast-maintained rust-free models for sale. The post 2022 ones for sale just don’t have enough of a discount off new models to be worth buying unless.

Yes, anecdata from me as well, but the larger issue seems to be cars that run critical functions through the media or entertainment system only. My neighbor had a hybrid Volvo that was towed to the dealership multiple times because the car wouldn’t start when the media center froze. It was always fixed for free but ultimately they decided to sell it as it wasn’t worth the hassle.

I'm pretty excited about the Slate, bezo's car startup. No built in UI, bring your own device, including screens and sound. Potentially avoids all the overstuffed software issues in modern vehicles

The Cayman you mention has a resistive touchscreen, but to your point, everything that needs a physical control has a physical control.

These were global-maximum designs, it's all downhill from here.

Are you sure? It’s a small screen, controlled by a stalk on the right side of the steering column. It has never occurred to me that touching it might do something, but now I’ll have to be sure.

Also, note that this is a base model, with various “enhancements” added later, so it may be lacking certain (all) options.

Pretty sure they all had the touchscreen ('13 981BS here.) The screen is usually used for nav, Sport Chrono, and other bells and whistles, but even with the standard audio system it should let you use the screen to adjust the tone controls, radio stations, and stuff like that. The CAR button should also bring up a menu with various settings.

The idea behind the stalk is more to let you control the instrument-panel display if you don't have the multifunction wheel controls.

I have a Mr12Volt CarPlay adapter in mine that works nicely, although capacitive multitouch would be a lot better for that. Key point of course is that none of this gadgetry is actually required when driving. They will take this car when they pry my skeletal fingers off the buttons.

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