txyaloo said:
Waffledynamics said:
Someone help me understand the inverse relationship between my car's depreciating value and my insurance rates.
Insurance in general simply doesn't make a lot of good sense sometimes.
Cars aren't made to be repaired anymore. Your $40 tail light assembly now costs $3000 because it's LED and contains blindspot sensors. As cars age, suppliers stop producing repair parts, and the risk of the car being totaled from a fender bender goes up. Rates go up to cover the risk.
It's a racket all around.
This is a long aside on the cost of owning an automobile that is not caused by inflation.
The complexity of just about every brand of vehicle has driven up prices because of the sensors and software intensive systems. On the other hand, there are other trends in car design that are driving up the cost of ownership.
Most car brands other than Japanese brands have deliberately made it almost impossible for anyone but their dealerships to repair automobiles by using proprietary software and physical bus configurations. The CAN bus achieves a basic standard interface but they manufacturers move as much as possible to proprietary systems and tools that are only available to dealerships.
German brands have also deaigned their cars so that very routine maintenance requires hours of labor. It's a deliberate middle finger to their customers to remind them that their car is not a purchased product but a subscription service. For example, certain BMW models require removing the exhaust manifold to change the oil filter.
With the exception of a few Japanese brands, most cars are designed so that low cost components and filters require significant labor hours to replace even if the price of the components are not that expensive. Labor hours are almost pure profit for the dealership.
The third reason that's already been mentioned is drivetrain and suspension components that are made of cheap materials and designed without enough reserve strength to handle normal stree over long periods of time or brief periods of high stress. They use plastic for parts that should be made of at least aluminum if not steel because of sustained load an exposure to heating cycles.
German car makers have turned the unrebuildable engine into an art form by making aluminum blocks with a thin coating on the cylinder walls rather than using iron or steel sleeves. They almost ensure that the engines will fail before 200k miles by recommending 10-20,000 mile oil change intervals where even the best oils will polymerize and lose their protective value.
The number of car brands that I would consider buying either new or used is just Toyota, Honda, Subaru, and Mazda. That's in part because I usually buy used cars and try to do routine maintenance myself.
