Re:The 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Bubble Is About to Burst
by dazc on Friday January 13, 2023 @10:03AM
(#34368671)
Old French cars break down a lot and soon become worthless or a complete liability.
Old German cars break down less but cost a small fortune to repair when they do.
British cars such a Range Rovers and Jaguars can be problematic from day one and will continue to deteriorate thereafter.
Old Japanese cars tend to keep going forever.
There are a few outliers such as some older Fords that were over engineered but, generally speaking, observe the 4 points above and you won't go far wrong.
Yeah, but you have the knowledge and skills that you can determine if a beater car is worth the effort. Most people, however, do not have either of these... they get shafted by car salespeople who just want to push cars off their lot and fleece people later-on for repairs.
And the problem just gets worse with more modern cars - I can fix up something like a Volkswagen T4 van or probably, if it comes around, a lot of shit on any 90s era car. But for anything more modern, particularly stuff where you need specialized diagnostic toolkits, 2000ish Renaults where you have to plan three to four hours for a headlight replacement [1] or built out of aluminium or worse, composite material? Fuck that, I'm out. Modern car construction has completely sacrificed repairability in favour of crash resistance, lighter weight and/or cheaper assembly.
[1] https://www.ehow.co.uk/how_6471814_replace-headlight-renault...