Changing the subject to something possibly less contentious, but who knows, it used to be possible to know when a car had broken down by the fact that it would stop moving, or smoke would issue from under the bonnet or whatever. Now all that happens in the first instance is that a WARNING LIGHT comes on, you check the manual which says "your transmission is about to explode", you go to the garage, someone there plugs in his diagnostic code reader device thing, they say "can't really see what's wrong, maybe nothing, I've reset the system so you can drive again but if the lights come back on bring the car back right away", you get a bill for (in this particular case) £45 and off you go. Now I don't distrust these mechanics, they were recommended to me by someone I know who has the same make of car, but I don't think I'd be wrong in thinking that this setup is wide open to abuse, is it not? Is that really a great advance on the aforementioned immobility and smoke? I wonder.
Well the theory is that by the time you get to the smoke and immobility stage, you've probably done some quite serious and expensive damage, and the warning lights are supposed to alert you to things going wrong before they get to the serious and expensive stage. However ....
The simple fact is that motor vehicles are not a good environment for electronics. There are extremes of temperature, loads of vibration, a lot of dirt - even for those who answer the call of the car wash a lot more frequently than I do - and not a lot of space. It's true that vehicle manufacturers spend a lot of time and effort in trying to improve reliabililty (especially now that a certain amount of electronic control is now effectively mandated by EU legislation, notably in safety-critical functions like braking and engine management) but they're also trying to do it as cheaply as possible, which is quite a challenge when a modern vehicle may contain as many as fifty electronic control units, which are interconnected. And the test bed can never quite reproduce everything that gets thrown at a vehicle system in real life. So, in other words, niggles do occur and vehicle manufacturers do tend towards the apocalyptic in their instruction manuals (especially in the US market, where manufacturers are terrified of ending up in court).
On the other hand ....
Nobody makes any money out of selling cars these days - keen competition means there's no profit margin. So, in order to maintain their flashy premises and so on, car dealers have a powerful incentive to keep your vehicle in the dealer network as long as possible for servicing and repair. Hence the warranties which ensure that for the first few years your car will face the most expensive servicing options possible; dealers can make their profits by charging you £100 per hour for YTS trainees (or their modern day equivalents) to hack at your shiny pride and joy, knowing that if you go elsewhere you've invalidated your warranty.
Add to this the 40% depreciation in the first eighteen months, and you can see why buying a new car is one of the most economically irrational decisions you can take.
The answer is what used to be known
bangernomics - buy an old one that appears to have been reasonably looked after, service it at your friendly local garage (or yourself) and run it until it breaks irretrievably - which eventually it will. Then buy another one. You are both looking after your wallet and protecting the environment (keeping an old car going, as long as it's properly serviced, is less damaging than building a new one). And you will be free of the tyranny of the warning light.
