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I think Harry makes some very good points

1000 Percent. Everyone I know Enthusiast and non enthusiast longs for simpler cars.

Yea, modern cars will not be rebuilt and refurbished like my 85 911. New cars are designed to be disposable. Try to find the 50+ computers in your car after 20 or 30 years. My old analog 911 can be refurbished over and over. The DME computer and the cruise controller are pretty simple, and both of mine have been refurbishment too re-solder the cracked solder joints.

So what I'm hearing is that I should until 2030 to buy my 2025 GT3 Touring. I hope he's right. Because the 997 GT3 is appreciating ever so slightly: https://www.classic.com/m/porsche/911/997/9972/gt3/

Priced the same or higher than the 991 GT3s with engine replacements.

The other day my 2003 M3 had a brake lights problem... Troubleshooted (troubleshot?) it to the Light switch module. I got one from a wrecked car and that solved the issue but caused a "tamper dot" on the Odometer because, get this: The light switch is encoded with the VIN and the mileage of the car.

WHY the F would you do that in 2003, BMW ? Imagine what they do now, traffic between all ECUs is probably double encrypted ! We are lucky there is a big community support for this era, still, and with some antiquated laptop OS/software and a special cable I was able to fix this.. That makes me wonder which way it's gonna go for those, say 2005->"now era" cars..

The encryption may be too tough to break anymore, and those cars will be totally unserviceable anymore. OR, we will have new tech / ECU that is smart enough to override all that garbage much in the way my E46 encoding is defeatable now. Given how people seem eager to retain their old manual gas cars vs the new electrics, it could go either way!

The trend is actually to reduce the # of ECUs in new cars again, this time to save cabling and Money (and dependance on ukraine..I mean suppliers). So again, could go either way. All I know is I'm keeping my oldies (and cycling thru moderns via lease, not buying those cellphones on wheels). I posted a while back that the major reason of insurance cost hike on cars is apparently from $$$ of all the friggin doo-dads manufacturers add in them (cameras, lane control, self driving stuff, etc.. all these take $$ to reset/rebuild post accidents and often double repair costs). Simple cars FTW !

My 2020 Dodge Ram has 3 fuse boxes and about 65+ fuses............

I upgraded my DME from 4K to 8K. I like some real power in the chip! ;)

My brother's daily driver is a 1954 VW bug. He still uses points and a condenser. He figures in the event of a massive solar storm, or EMP attack, he will be able to drive his bug.

My 99 996 and 02 986S are what I consider modern analog . They both have ABS and the 996 has PSM . Other than airbags that's it for nannies . One ECM and one immobilizer .

I get the raw driver feedback I want and still relatively easy to diagnose and repair . I have no need to go any newer .

Same thing with lower status cars as well...all the tech turning new car buyers away. Harry made the point...tech nobody ever asked for. What goes unsaid: "But demanded by a faceless bureaucracy." (Sorry..hope that doesn't send this to Parf, but there it is.)

Anyway, it's not just the high performance machine...Ford is hemorrhaging money, and they're not alone.

Harry also touched on another thing...driving just isn't the fun it once was.

Although I am not in the market for the kind of cars Harry was discussing, I learned the depreciation lesson three decades ago. We haven't bought a new vehicle since '93.
Paul's fun in driving comment I think can be placed at the figurative feet of two causes. First, there are certainly more vehicles on the roads these days ( many operated by people who are just crappy drivers). Second, a cheap econobox is far more capable than many of the 'hot' sports cars of our past. I was reminded of this a few years ago when i fixed up a Mk I Golf Cabriolet. It reminded me of how much fun those cars were. I certainly wouldn't want to give up my "Old Man's Car " for it, but it was entertaining.
As far as repairing the current generation of vehicles, don't discount the computer nerds to whom a car's computer is simply an opportunity. Someone built it and wrote the code, it can be replaced with something else.

Best
Les

Once again, my antique 85 911 is a blast to drive. Reliable and fun. The best part is is now worth 5 times MORE than what I paid for it. I have to keep raising the agreed value appraisal on it. I just finished a valve adjustment and oil change. I can do 95% of the work on it myself.

Personally (not counting my wife's cars) since 1974 I have owned three cars. I still own two of them.

At the Porsche driving experience I spent two days driving a lot of the new cars. A new 911 GTS is just an astonishing vehicle. I was hitting 125 on at Barber. In my antique analog car I was just getting to 90 before I had to modulate the brake pedal to slow down for the turns. The GTS is just point and shoot. The PDK reads your mind and shifts in micro seconds instead on seconds like my 915 transmission. In the end, I would not swap my antique for a new 911 GTS. The 911 Turbo S is beyond description fast. Wow, but for that money, no way.

A new Boxster GTS got through an autocross course with amazing speed. It was fun, but the car was doing most of the work. I was mostly a passenger and not really the driver.