> While I dislike the elecronification trend, cars are definitely better than they were 30-40 years ago, in a completely different league when it comes to relia

> While I dislike the elecronification trend, cars are definitely better than they were 30-40 years ago, in a completely different league when it comes to reliability. I'm going to have to strongly disagree here, particularly w/r/t reliability. We purchased my wife's vehicle new in 2014. While it's relatively well-regarded and we're happy with it overall, it's been far from trouble-free. We recently replaced the engine due to a well-known mechanic defect - but it was a defect that should have been apparent much earlier than it was, but went unnoticed because of a firmware issue in the ECM. In addition to that, we've had problems with the infotainment system needing to be manually rebooted every month or so in response to increasing "weirdness" over time. The buttons on the steering wheel stopped working consistently in ~2019. There were workaround for a while, but these days all of the buttons on the left side do the same thing (activate the connected phone's microphone), and the ones on the right don't work at all. I've torn the whole steering column and dash apart to verify that it's not a wiring issue; it has to be something wrong with the infotainment system at this point. This wasn't our only experience with newer vehicles. Every one we've ever owned - or just worked on for friends - is plagued by these sorts of electronic "gremlins". They get worse over time, too. Yes, new vehicles are very nice with all the bells and whistles when they're new... but those same features quickly become "just one more thing to break" as the vehicles age. To make matter worse, they're typically very expensive to fix, even if you have the skills, time, and tools to do it yourself. I'm already $1,500 deep into fixing those buttons on the steering wheel, and haven't succeeded yet. I drive a 2000 Jeep Wrangler. Granted, it's "only" 24 years old, but it has been far more reliable than any other vehicle my family has owned since I got it. When I bought it, in ~2011, I was looking for an older model - ideally it would have been a CJ-7, which was made from 1976-1986 - right at your 40 year cutoff. I've replaced several major components, sure - the engine, the entire rear end, the front suspension, etc. - but it has >200k miles on it, and the engine was poorly maintained when I bought the vehicle. What's more, all of that combined cost less than the engine replacement in my wife's 2015 model year vehicle. There's much less to go wrong, too. There's no infotainment system to start acting funny, no backup camera to break, no buttons on the steering wheel to start doing random things they're not supposed to... it's just a vehicle. Complexity is the enemy of reliability, and modern vehicles are very complex. Some of that is due to the market demanding new features. Some of it is due to government regulations. Some of it is just manufacturers using more complex solutions because time marches on. ... I have more to say here, but no time. Maybe I'll come back :)