To be entirly honest i would not buy a car that complicated.

Ah, but you're falling into the trap that I hear so many grumpy old curmudgeons (like myself) complain of: "These new cars are so complicated you can't fix them yourself anymore. What a bogus deal that is..."

I'm here to tell you -- I've been both places: simple old cars you can fix yourself; and complicated new cars you can't fix yourself. And new cars are better!

Most of you are too young to remember the bad old days... when you traded a car in at 40,000 miles not because you wanted the status and new-car smell of a new car, but because at 40K your old car was worn out.

Remember every 3,000 miles doing a tuneup? "Points-Plugs-and-Condenser" was considered to be one word.

How about a 1-year, 12,000 mile warranty?

Drum brakes were nice -- you could change the brake shoes yourself -- and as long as you didn't want make more than two high-speed stops in the same 5 minute period, or stay in a straight line while you applied them, they worked just fine.

Somebody who got 100,000 miles out of his engine was an object of awe and admiration. You'd do an upper-end overhaul (valves and piston rings) at about 50,000 miles.

Given the choice, I'd much rather have a car that I can't fix myself that rarely needs fixing and goes 10,000 miles between scheduled maintenance stops instead of some ineptly engineered vehicle designed and built so crudely that even I could work on it.

Modern cars, in no small part because of their electronic complexity, far outperform their predecessors in every aspect: acceleration, braking, cornering, reliability, cost of operation, comfort, you name it. And amazingly enough, they cost less now than they did 30 years ago. (That's cost in real terms: how many hours do you have to work to purchase the car.)

So, yes, I'll happily take my overly complex computer-run, long-lived, high-performing car. You couldn't pay me to go back to the cars of 30 years ago. But, as I said, I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon. YMMV.

tanstaafl.