To avoid powerleveling too much I’ll just say that my occupation is deeply involved in analyzing certain aspects of the design and production of virtually any make and model of vehicle (among other things) in a way that gives me a lot of insight into how the sausage is made, why it’s made that way, and how it can be made better.
I also work on cars as a hobby, going as far as doing “advanced” stuff like rebuilding transmissions and designing retrofit wire harnesses in my free time. Modern cars in general are not more difficult to work on than the cars of yesteryear, either because most of them do not require service as regularly as older vehicles or because they just require different skills, knowledge, and sometimes tools because the technologies are either new or have evolved. No shit that a modern EFI system can’t be tuned with a screwdriver and your ear like a carburetor. It requires different tools and skills (both of which are easy to acquire thanks to the Internet) and with those in your possession it’s as easy or even easier to work on. It’s also far more capable, more reliable, and superior by every virtually metric that matters. This is just baby duck syndrome shit.
That said, some cars, regardless of the era, are a gigantic pain in the dick to wrench on either due to difficulty or due to the seemingly constant need for maintenance. For instance, some older vehicles, while comparatively simple, can have insatiable appetites for parts (oh boy new serpentine belts for a Corvair every ~10k miles!) which, even when cheap and easy, gets really tiresome. They may also require shit that the average Joe isn’t going to be comfortable with at relatively short intervals compared to a modern vehicle, such as valve lash adjustments. To offer a modern example for the sake of fairness, I generally refuse to work on BMWs from the past ~15 years because shit that should be dead simple, such as replacing a valve cover gasket, is a 2- or 3-hour ordeal and requires a tool cart worth of torx/e-torx/pentalobe/MOTHERFUCKING TRIPLE-SQUARE sockets and bits because G*rmans are a fucking plague. I can do the same on a modern Honda in like half an hour or less with a basic tool kit.
Any bitching about parts availability applies to all cars, eventually. For example, try sourcing new targa top seals for your 1983 Shitbox GT and you’ll find that they either no longer exist, are made of dubious quality by a single company, or virtually all of the ones available are hoarded by some dude in Kentucky with a Web 1.0 e-store that had the foresight to snatch all the remaining stock of OEM parts 20 years ago because he knew he could extort $800+ per seal out of other, desperate, 1983 Shitbox GT owners.
Modern vehicles, as vehicles, are generally just better than old ones. This is objectively true. However, for a car enthusiast this is SUBJECTIVELY false. I love many vehicles, even ones that were widely considered to be trash when they were still new. I usually see an inherent worthiness in most cars and I believe that a vintage survivor is proof of the commitment and passion of its owner just by virtue of its continued existence. I get unreasonably excited to see something like, say, a mint condition Chevy Vega rolling around. Whomever has that thing in the current year must LOVE that car, so how couldn’t that bring smiles wherever it goes? Every vehicle has a character, and strengths, and weaknesses. Nearly every vehicle or marque, even the stuff that I dismiss or dislike, has someone, somewhere, that is passionate about it. That’s wonderful.
