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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Which is also why these modern cars have turned a minor belt failure into an expensive catastrophic failure, often destroying much of the engine.

I'd hardly call it a design to aspire to.

I'd probably compare it more closely with a system where everything receives a mutable God object.

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He's describing the accessory belt. You're referring to the timing belt.

This description and definition discussion describes very well the definition lawyering and specsheet-rewritting that agile avoids, by having the walking specsheet (customer) sitting in during the creation process.

Yes, the timing belt or timing chain is inside the engine casing and it can be bad when it or subordinate parts fail. Though a timing belt/chain failure causing a catastrophic event for the engine itself, I don't think that's very common. What I'm referring to is called the serpentine belt and is often accompanied by what's called an accessory or AC belt.

But modern cars don't need nearly as much maintenance and are more reliable on averable.

That has not been my experience at all.

My 91 pickup and 99 minivan's engines are still going strong with well over 200k miles, rarely having anything major wrong with them in the entire time I own them, whereas my 2004 and 2009 cars both with ~100k miles have been nothing but total maintenance nightmares. Timing issues, computer failures. Sheer nightmares.

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