Some great thoughts in this thread, most of them I already agree with. Some thoughts I haven't seen discussed..... Cars go out of style. They last a lot longer

Some great thoughts in this thread, most of them I already agree with. Some thoughts I haven't seen discussed..... Cars go out of style. They last a lot longer than a phone or tablet. Look at any 00's era GM product. The radio/climate buttons are straight out of a Cozy Coupe. It's gross, but in 2001 they were stylin'! Look at the 1992 Subaru Legacy, or the 1990 Ford Tempo, or the 1991 Nissan Sentra. Electric seatbelts, enormous speedometers, oddly shaped steering wheels... They were cool! Now they're eye-catchingly gaudy. Lets not even get into the "digital dash" (yeah, I'm talking to Jethro in the Pontiac). What if you could have a car with a touchscreen but it only included Android Gingerbread (2.3) and that was it? Other than that I am always amazed that modern cars have back up cameras and drive-by-wire steering/throttle/brakes but they still have a simple "check engine" light. They don't even print out their own trouble codes let alone tell you "Cylinder 5 misfire!" Such a feature would be trivial and add real value, especially in the truck market. Perhaps when right-to-repair takes over there will be no more incentive to keep the workings of cars magical and mysterious to the layman.