[Chickensoup]

In the sixties and seventies there were consumer advocates who fought the car companies who purposefully limited the lives of cars so they would sell more. planned obsolescence. Vance Packard made his bones on this subject.

Now we have good looking cars whose lives are limited by the complexity of the electronics. I have had to trash two nice looking cars because the electronic fixes were too expensive and they wouldn't make inspection without them. Planned obsolescence. And corporatist leftists just loooove it.

Same with appliances.

[central_va]

Is it cheaper in the long run for me to buy an old sixties Ford truck that I can work on myself but only gets 10 MPG or buy a modern truck that I cannot work on but gets 20 MPG and only lasts 10-12 years?

[zeugma]

Now we have good looking cars whose lives are limited by the complexity of the electronics. I have had to trash two nice looking cars because the electronic fixes were too expensive and they wouldn't make inspection without them. Planned obsolescence. And corporatist leftists just loooove it.

Jump forward 30 years. What happened to the 'classic' car market? It doesn't exist, because there is noone who can find the computer chips that go inside the cars, and they are designed not to run without them. I've actually considered investing in the various chips that go into some of the popular muscle cars today. They'll be worth a fortune 30 years from now.