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The biggest hurdle for long term "classic" status of most modern cars boils down to the electronics.
This is not about having the scan tools. programming tools etc. No, the issue is the electronics themselves have a limited life, most components become completely obsolete withing 10-15 years and cannot ever be replaced.
To keep a car running and viable 20-30 years from now is simply not possible, unless there is a huge investment in aftermarket electronics to re-engineer all the components to repair the many complicated electronics that control every aspect of the car.
This is true for ALL electronics across all industries. I work as an electrical engineer in industrial and military/aerospace electronics for over 35 years, guess what, all electronics become obsolete and there is NO going back. Dead is dead. This is something I deal with every day as our devices are 10-15 year life span and even that is VERY difficult to support. Many parts will not be around more than 10 years, tech moves on, period.
Automotive electronics dictates 15 year life span for components, after that, they will typically be phased out and never manufactured again.
That is where modern cars will become obsolete and non-repairable. Not the mechanical aspect, that is not an issue, mechanical parts can be custom machined/fabricated, electronics cannot not. Take a simple processor or memory chip (hundreds in a typical car), when the silicon die is obsolete, there is no replacement and never will be.
Very few cars will ever stand the test of time due to the electronics, the heavy reliant integration of those electronics and irreplaceable nature of electronics in general.
Unless someone opens a die fab to recreate "old" electronic components, there is no way to repair the car. This will not happen as the cost and reverse engineering required would not be justified by any real demand. Also, any given year, the electronics are changing, so no way to cover all the myriad of configurations that evolve even over a 10 year span. Simply not possible.
Once the electronics in the car are dead, especially if it is 20+ years later, that is that, dead is dead.
That is the reality of modern cars. Electronics are a short life span, no way around that. The heavy integration of electronics guarantees the car cannot survive many decades later, unless it a rare, well preserved specimen, even then it may require electronic repair that will simply just not be possible.
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