>I think if you buy a newer anything you are going to have expensive
>repairs if you go to the dealer.  The way that most new cars are set up
>it is getting harder and harder for a non-dealer shop to be able to do
>the work.  I know it is an extreme example but a friend of mine works at
>a Mercedez Benz Dealership.  He says that there are so many systems on
>the new MBs (over 100!) that at any given moment something is almost
>guaranteed to be having a problem.  Too many gadgets!  Then there is the
>computer side of things.  Did you know that many new Engine Computers
>(ECUs, ECMs, the Brain, whatever you like to call it) are coded to that
>particular car and engine.  So if you remove it and try to use it in
>another car it either will not work at all, or will require recoding
>that can only be done, take a guess, at the MB dealership.  Vehicles are
>becoming a rolling collection of computers and high tech hardware.
>Mechanics will have to continually learn new things and techniques to
>keep up.  However investing in proprietary computer terminals to be able
>to do even the more simple of engine repairs may either be too expensive
>or not even available to your local independent shop.  This is great
>news for the dealers and their inflated prices for everything (as I said
>this is not limited to VW but covers all dealers that I have ever heard
>of) but it is bad news for those of us who like to keep our older
>vehicles on the road for many years to come.

Faulty electronics are a problem. Ever taken an item into a repair
outfit and had them say "not repairable"? They LIE. They just can't
be bothered. All electronics are composed of readily-available
components. Any competent electronics technician can fix them easily.
As I am having the experience of right now... I just happen to know
such a tech, who has repaired an "unrepairable" Mac power supply (dry
joint and faulty coil) and a turbo-timer (dry joints) and is fixing a
Sony Hi8 Camcorder, Olympus & Sony digital cameras. Car electronics
are no different.

>The supposedly "reliable" brands like Toyota and Honda seem to be super
>reliable on the small scale, not nickle and diming their owners, until
>they go out of the warranty period and suddenly need a transmission or
>transmission computer.  I have known Honda and Toyota owners who bought
>their vehicles brand new in the last couple of years to experience these
>catastrophic events right outside the warranty.  Their cup holders and
>seat warmers work great though :-)

Never heard of Toyotas spitting transmissions except after say
600,000km of hard use.

You should have seen the trouble my brother-in-law in Calgary had
with his Mazda MPV. It had an intermittent fault with the management
computer... when the engine was hot (going uphill in the Rockies;
very rarely in town) it would start to stutter, to the point where it
just couldn't make it up grades. It would never do this when he
showed it to mechanics... so they never fixed it. FINALLY, after over
a year of this, it DID do it, and the computer was replaced under the
used-car warranty.
--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut
� Opinions stated are mine, not those of Otago University
"There is water at the bottom of the ocean"  - Talking Heads