Thoughts on newer vehicles mentality..
Well a lot of people want reliability too...and the newer car should* be more reliable.
That's the way people think. I'm not gonna disagree with that. My wife and her old boss used to have a war over this, when she was driving her '87 5th Ave over a 1000 miles a week. Hell, there was times I was changing the oil every two weeks. But never more than every three weeks. He would say these exact same words to her.
Her 5th was stone cold reliable. Mechanicals? Hardly ever worked on it. Changed the starter a couple of times. Had to make a rescue run once because the firewall solenoid lost ground. But that many miles on a car in a week? Tell me one that you won't have to do brakes on or keep the maintenance up on constantly.
He kept giving her s*** for driving something so "old." I nailed him at an office party one time. I worked at a dealership at the time. No, dealerships don't have service departments, performing recalls, changing out transmissions, repairing blown head gaskets, testing out bad electronics, what have you. Dealerships
never have anything come in on a hook. They don't have loaner cars, rentals at the service counters, or courtesy vans to shuttle customers.
And while you're waiting a week for the dealership to finally get in that reman transmission or all the parts to bench rebuild it you're still paying the bank for the privilege of owning the car.
I'm not against owning anything newer. Just a matter of perspective. I've twisted wrenches on way too many cars from this century to say newer is necessarily more reliable.