[Porsche-O-Phile]

I think I've gotten about as "modern" as I care to with respect to my vehicle fleet. My wife has a 2002 Toyota and I've got a 2001 Mercedes. Both are nice and reasonably easy to work on, but both also have entirely too much computer/electronic bull***** in them for my liking. My '85 944 is about as advanced as I care to have insofar as computerized technology in a car - I can actually understand all of the circuitry and sensors and exactly how the logic processing in the DME works. Anything more modern than that starts getting into computer-programmer voodoo realms that I don't particularly care to deal with (I spend enough of my life on frikkin' computers, why the hell do I need them in my hobbies too?)

I like my 911 because it's simple, yet refined. The most complicated electronic circuit in it was the radio, and I tore that out. The less electronics crap in cars and the less plastic crap in them, the better. There's precious little of either in my '74, which is just fine by me.

With respect to oil drain design, I have to say my former 1988 GMC pickup was the most idiotically designed vehicle I've ever come across. For a simple oil change, the pan and drain plug was easy to get to. However the filter was not. It would require literally destroying the old filter by skewering it with a screwdriver and trying to twist it off in a very confined space, and naturally all the oil ran all over the place and you'd bash your knuckles about 50 times in the process. There was absolutely, positively no way to get a filter wrench (strap or socket type) on that thing.

Changing the oil pan gasket was impossible without removing the entire front suspension, the front driveshafts, dropping the transfer case and associated powertrain components - never mind that you could access all of the oil pan bolts and drop the pan down about 1/2", but it wasn't enough to extract the old gasket or install the new one (couldn't get it to clear the oil pickup tube). Complete idiocy. A $5 gasket and a job that should by all rights take about 30 minutes (if that) was over 50 hours of labor, two $200 transmission jacks, a few hundred bucks worth of air tools for all the heavy-duty suspension bolts and drivetrain bolts, numerous circlips and other "one-time-use" fasteners, etc. I think the total associated costs ran north of $1,000 by the time all was said and done. The day I kicked that infernal POS to the curb I celebrated. I'll never buy another GM product. Ever.