The electronics with which cars are now loaded hasten their obsolescence. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
You have probably heard the term, planned obsolescence. You may not know that it did not mean building cars cheaply, in order to assure they fell apart quickly – so as to make it necessary to buy a new one, repeatedly.
That is the common, generally understood meaning.
But it isn’t what was actually planned.
Rather, the plan was to make people want to buy a new car – by regularly changing how the new cars looked, relative to prior model year cars. The idea being to leverage the desire many people have to have the latest thing and to keep up with the Joneses. If your next door neighbor – Jones – just parked a brand-new ’57 Chevy in his driveway, maybe you felt your ’55 was looking a little old and fogey. So you drove it to the dealer and bought yourself a brand-new ’57.
That was the idea.
About to have the rocker panels replaced on my 22 year old (170,000 miles) Maxima SE. Still runs like a charm.