Yes, I keep on thinking that a premium market will develop for Toyota and Honda cars from roughly ~2006-2010. Those cars were the height of internal combustion technology without all of the electronics.
I'm averaging 20-30% of a new car payment keeping them running and replacing big parts, but I would spend double (maybe lol) that so I can keep the experience. If I had a commute longer than a half hour maybe I'd look into a Prius or Leaf? Just waiting for a cts-v wagon to fall into my lap....
That said this electronics is rock solid, my '08 Civic Type-R is basically pristine mechanically and after 15 years only required maintenance of wear parts. The paint job though has time taking its toll, as varnish is peeling off in various places. Still with proper care I expect the car to last another 15 years without breaking a sweat.
1. In the world of Honda S2000's, all other things being equal the 2004-05 models command a premium over the 00-03 and 06-09 model years.
2. My wife (2022 Prius) sighs when she sees how attached I am to my 2008 CR-V. It has 220K miles and I'd be happy to drive it another 220K.
A few years back, I had a late model Mercedes GLS, and the damn thing was in the shop almost every other month, and each time it was at least $300-400. Mostly it was electronic components that were at fault; an error in the anti-theft system which cost me $2000 was too much to bear, and I sold the car at a loss...
2005 9-3 Linear here. I wish minor repairs were that cheap. Wait until you need your water pump replaced ;) Get ready to squick hard at the required labor charges (water pump is integral to the engine IIRC, requiring the engine to be pulled.)
Right now I need new spark plugs, injectors, and a turbo replaced, and a grounding strap issue somewhere I haven't been able to isolate. Gonna run me a small bit of change.
As someone who owned a Saabaru, many 4 figure shop quotes become a weekend and <$100 in parts. Just depends on if you have the time and space to DIY.
FBOW however, the increasing demands of Fuel Economy and emissions standards led to a lot of poorly-executed moves for various companies from a reliability standpoint; Sometimes it's dual clutch transmissions or CVTs, sometimes it's stuff like cylinder deactivation or a cheaped out Turbo 4 or 3 cylinder design.
And then, all the speeds on an auto in general now. It took a decent amount of time for (most of) the automakers to make a reliable 4 speed auto across their lines. Hondamatic 5 speeds warned of things to come, because first everyone started flipping to 6 speeds (emphasis on the starting bit, in 2006). Then over the next 10-12 years we got all the way from 6 speeds to 10, often without enough size increase budget to know it will all be reliable.
So what they did was first drop their pickup truck and then develop a smooth and efficient 4 cylinder engine mated to traditional transmission to deploy across the fleet, then slowly migrate all of them to a hybrid drive and then finally move to a fleet wide EV architecture. This keeps the fleet average down while also not compromising in other ways like crummy CVTs. (Im not sure if they use deactivation.)
Will it work? well so far their first EV entry didn't fare so well. But they are still on the move to hybrid phase and they make some pretty darn smooth cars these days.
> Their thesis was whats the point of being green if you still are selling gas guzzling hogs and you just sell some garbage EV to offset them.
Ford doesn't do this, but at the same time I find it hilariously suspicious that despite the success of the Maverick, there doesn't seem to be any messaging about increasing capacity. And I say that because even as an early adopter -most- problems have been in the 'I can still drive it' category. And yet they won't increase production.
The 5th Gen Camry was one of the first, if not the first, cars with drive-by-wire throttle.