Anecdata says that Japanese cars are the most reliable ones. (Old) Toyotas in Africa are a must. They endure and can be repaired in a local car workshop.
So what happens to Africa when the old cars finally completely disappear, and nothing can be repaired in any reasonable sense of the word?
Probably hard to know, but by now, we're already seeing that blu-ray players are rendered nearly useless by lost remote controls (because they (all blu-ray player manufacturers) no longer build adequate physical playback controls into the set top box, and 99% of blu-ray on-disc software requires a directional keys and an enter key to trigger playback of the main content, which can only be found on remote controls), leading to a necessity for bootleggers that can rip and recopy the main content of the movie to a version stripped of menus, that immediately plays automatically upon insertion.
You can buy a new remote control if you want. It's a little annoying to set up but works flawlessly thereafter. I recently bought an all-in-one remote because my TV's remote broke apart and now I've got one remote for all the devices in my living room.
It's shocking to me that this is even a thing. I looked it up and apparently Blu-ray players are required to execute Java off the disc! How far we've come since the Sony CD rootkit days...
A cursory read over the spec on Wikipedia indicates (among other horrifying things) that it is possible and supported to release a Blu-ray that contains no media, but instead streams it over the internet from the studio's server.
Someone needs to design a future-proof upgradable car. Get the design right the first time and then technology upgrades as science advances, but no planned obsolescence.
Toyota Land Cruiser is supposedly designed for a 25 year life span. If you want reliability, this would be your best bet. It's not cheap, but has good resale value.
Honda Civic that I had would have automated service recommendations based on some sort of diagnostics or heuristics, and tended to recommend service (oil change and tire rotation with some inspection and sometimes air filter replacement) every 9k miles for me.
I had the impression 6k miles is the standardized recommended interval for most brands (e.g. my current Subaru) but I guess that isn’t true for Lexus?
