The cost to repair cars is almost always much higher than necessary as a result of many layers of poor design choices. Fiat incentives cause car companies to make non-standard components (even between their own models) so that they can make money being the exclusive seller of certain parts. Then when they decide that producing those parts is no longer profitable the cars become very difficult to repair & sometimes more valuable in pieces than they are whole. The problem seems to have gotten significantly worse in the last 10 or 20 years. 

 Recycle cars that is.  

 Yeah, but it's still very inefficient to take something that required so much energy to form it into functional shapes & then strip & melt it all down again. Without fiat incentives I think we would see more effort to build things that were more modular & repairable & updatable. 

 I like fixing our 20yr old European machinery. So cheap and high quality compared to replacing them, ans I learn so much! 

 Cars before spyware will be all the rage in a few years. Actually just bought a much older used car specifically for that reason. 

 I once abandoned one on the side of the road. 

A few years later I remembered that, at some point, I had stashed within the car a tiny encrypted USB drive. It contained a backup of my BIP38 encrypted private keys. 😧

Thankfully I had moved the funds not too long after the car was abandoned, though I doubt anyone could have gotten past two encryption layers. 😂 

 There's a laminated sheet of addresses and BIP38-encypted private keys in the attic of an old share house near here. Addresses long swept but a time capsule for whoever stumbles on this one day. 

 A very different time 

 I've never thrown away a car.