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In 2009 I bought an old 1960s muscle car. The interior and underbody were all nice but the paint was really needing an update (scratched, chipped, etc). Fast f

In 2009 I bought an old 1960s muscle car. The interior and underbody were all nice but the paint was really needing an update (scratched, chipped, etc). Fast forward a few years, extensive bodywork, and a whole lot of cash and the car had show car quality paint. But there were certainly days that I missed driving around my old, beaten up paint job car. I would leave my coffee mug on the roof as I got in, would park wherever I wanted, and I generally didn’t worry about the car much. Now I fret over parking it and have to walk from the back of any lot. I’m not complaining… I certainly love driving around shiny car. But it’s an interesting observation that the cheap/beaten up version had virtues that I miss - to the article’s point.

xyzzy123 5y ago
There's a certain aesthetic to this though - the beater that survives. Often these things were expensive when new. Music gear, machine tools and well loved laptops are great for this. A 1960's car (survivorship bias!) has this quality in a way that cheap electronic crap tends not to. The connectors wear out. The battery dies. It just kaputs for no discernable reason and it's not economic to fix. You want stuff early in its lifecycle where the manufacturers accidentally over-engineer it because they're not confident about the lifespan yet - or that kind of "Toyota" stage in the lifecycle where they got making it good cheaply fully down. I reckon you'd have to go through a lot of cheap smart watches to find a proper "beater", and the whole function of the devices tend to fight against this with interface standard and apps that render them quickly obsolete.