I just went through this, buying a car to replace the one I'd had for 13 years. Oh man, I had no idea how terrible the car industry had gotten; it was every bit as bad as you're fearing.

I had a slight preference for an automatic transmission but ended up looking mostly at manuals since those often lack a few of the "modern" anti-features. I wish I had better advice to give, the experience honestly bummed me out quite a bit.

Yeah, I hear this. I like driving a manual because I find it almost meditative. I've done some rally clinics so not to brag but I know what I'm doing with it and double clutch, heel toe, routinely. It's like a little mini game to be as smooth and precise as possible at it every time I drive, and I like that.

The dual clutch automatics that are in better cars today are legit pretty amazing tech, but, it just doesn't fit my vibe so to speak. In any case, I'm quite sure my next car is going to be pure electric so it may not even have a transmission, or if it does it'll be a two speed automatic you don't control. Meh.

I too dread this.

My current car's getting to about the number of kms that I usually sell at.

With covid making secondhand cars expensive for some weird reason, and all these terrible modern car trends, I just haven't been able to bring myself to "upgrade".

Honestly, take the money you'd spend to upgrade and instead overhaul the car. Need new front seat upholstery? Some new plastic end pieces? Maybe an engine rebuild? It probably won't cost more than a new(ish) car, maybe even cheaper.

Good idea, it's looking very much like I might end up going that way.

There's nothing compelling me to get a newer car, except for engine wear.

> I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things from 1990 or older running.

I'm at the point where I'm considering physically disabling the radios in my appliances.

"Error: cannot start (no connectivity). Please call a licensed repair technician to service your vehicle."

In case you're not aware, this is a thing that's happened (well, without the error message, I assume)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/zipcar-int...

Too helpful. More like "Failed with error 0xC0000005".

That's a real error Windows 11 gave me this week. I know, never install a Windows version less than two years old. It's been so long I forgot.

As if any Windows or in general Microsoft product gives useful error messages.

Hex error codes, or generic "Something went wrong" errors are the norm at Microsoft.

Not quite as bad, but when I tried out a car in 2008 with Ford/Microsoft's SYNC system (voice interface), there were cases where pressing an unconfigured button would disable the sound system until you restarted the engine. See number 8:

http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...

Also, whenever the power goes out, I always express thanks that the toilets still work, and they didn't introduce some npm-style pointless dependency.

'In the land of internet-connected devices, the man with the soldering iron is king.'