Manufacturers of newer cars deliberately design vehicles to be expensive to repair, because servicing and selling spare parts are more profitable businesses than selling the cars themselves.
As cars become more sophisticated and components interconnected, the very design and construction of parts is no longer simple or cheap to service. Expensive parts are one side of the coin; labor hours and associated assemblies sold as complete units financially push owners toward bankruptcy, especially with luxury vehicles.
A plastic ring worth a few euros, a bill for 34,500 euros
That this is not theory but everyday practice is best illustrated by a recent case from Finland. The owner of a Porsche Cayenne plug-in hybrid model took the car to an authorized service center due to a fault in the electric drive system. The diagnosis was brief and cold: a complete new transmission was needed. Price: 34,500 euros.
Private mechanic Mikko Simola, who later inspected the vehicle, uncovered the truth. The cause of the fault was a cracked plastic ring—a piece costing a few euros. The problem was not technical but purely commercial. This ring is not sold as a separate part. The only option the manufacturer offers is the complete transmission assembly, at full price. The mechanic fabricated this small part himself, the car started working again and returned to the road, and the owner saved over 30,000 euros, reports Finnish Ilta Sanomat.
This is no longer an exception. It has become the rule among all manufacturers.
A system designed to keep you in check
Car manufacturers have been earning more from spare parts and services for decades than from selling the vehicles themselves. Profit margins on certain original spare parts can exceed 200 percent. This is no accident—it is a strategy. Engineers design components that can only be replaced as expensive assemblies, never as individual cheap parts.
Authorized service centers, contractually bound to brands, are not allowed to offer cheaper alternative solutions. The owner is thus trapped: pay an astronomical bill or write off a vehicle that independent craftsmen mechanics, specialized in certain components, could repair.
Adding to this is another, less visible mechanism—design as a silent instrument of planned obsolescence. LED headlights that do not allow replacement of a single bulb. Bumpers that require an hour and a half of disassembly to access a trivial component. Control units that must be reprogrammed with every touch of the electronics. All this inflates labor hours in the service center, and with them, the final bill.
The numbers speak clearly. Since 2020, repair costs have increased by over 30 percent. The hourly labor rate at authorized service centers rises year after year (for premium brands, it is three times more expensive), and the prices of original parts are growing at a rate far exceeding general inflation. Insurance has not brought relief either: premiums are rising, and insurers justify this precisely with more expensive repairs.
Even private service centers and aftermarket parts are not much more affordable. It is a vicious cycle that feeds itself.
The question more and more drivers are asking
More and more owners are starting to loudly ask questions that until recently seemed unthinkable: Does it make sense to buy a newer, especially expensive, technologically sophisticated car if the first serious breakdown exceeds financial capabilities? Is it reasonable to enter ownership of a modern, well-equipped vehicle (un)knowingly that you are practically tied to exorbitantly expensive maintenance for life?
Everyone must find the answer to these questions themselves. But one thing is certain: the price of a car does not end at the dealership. It only begins there, and in the years to come, it continues to grow in ways you could not have imagined at the moment of purchase.