“become financially unfixable”
It’s ironic because today’s cars suffer that exact problem. My son is terrible at maintaining his car and is doing a LOT of catch-up work on maintenance now. It is hugely expensive to do it all at once after ignoring it for years. The complexity of cars, the huge number of control systems, the electronics, the labor cost of $200/hour. What a mess.
Cars prior to 1980 (or so) were easy to work on and everything was accessible. Not any more.
“Cars prior to 1980 (or so) were easy to work on and everything was accessible. Not any more.”
Yep! And the work was constant! Now it is common to go 100k+ with no repairs
I punt 100k hard miles on a Mustang with only normal maintenance.