Car ?'s

Mahes said:

That is also part of the cascade. Quality has dropped off, while the ability to repair them has become more difficult. You have less and less mechanics able to work on vehicles due to stringent systems being put into place that prevents anybody, other than the companies, from being able to work on them.

Families will no longer be able to afford to purchase, insure, and maintain two vehicles. This of course drastically cuts into sales, which then decreases manufacturing which leads to companies going bankrupt.

The next five years is going to be a ride...

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Not to mention they're trying to make everything essentially disposable. And the things which need to be repaired, it's whole unit swap outs.

I believe in another thread I ran down how I had an odd noise in my transmission at one point, took it to the dealer. They're only option was to swap out the whole transmission without even knowing what exactly was causing the sound, for the bargain price of just $17k. I called a local transmission shop some friends recommended and they said to just swing by they'd take a look but couldn't imagine anything needing a whole swap. So I told the dealership to button it back up and I'd have to think about it. Funny part being in "diagnosing" it and buttoning it back up, they fixed the noise.

Fast forward around a year and my car was right at 100k on the odometer and still running fine, so I had the transmission shop take a look just in case, and paid them to do my 100k maintenance "spa day" for my car. So Transmission servicing, rear diff servicing, new plugs, tune up, flush the coolant, replace a couple bushings in the suspension and front sway bars which I seem to have abused a bit over the last few years while they were at it, and check the car for anything odd. All done for under $2500.

My rule has become, find a good mechanic and never forget their phone number.