The modern automobile is safer, cleaner, more efficient, and more technologically advanced than anything that came before it. Yet those improvements have come at a cost. For many owners, mechanics, and independent repair shops, that cost is repairability.
Interesting thing here; I drive a 2013 vehicle. Other than regular maintenance, the only repair it’s ever needed was a rear bumper replacement and a bit of bodywork when someone rear ended me at a stoplight.
Contrast this with vehicles from the 1950s-1990s where sure, you could affordably repair them yourself or at the local garage, BUT that was something that became a regular event after the vehicle was 4-5 years old.
Personally, I’m more concerned with how manufacturers are closing off sections of the software in their vehicles such that it can’t be audited, security reviewed, independently patched, or modified to prevent all the telematics from flowing back to them.
I fairly recently replaced a water pump in my wife’s 2013 Lexus. Much easier than doing so in my old 1998 Accord. I didn’t even need to pull the timing cover off, for hers.