The strangest part about this forum is how many people actually take their 15-20 year old car to the dealer or a shop and don't do the wrenching themselves. I have several "enthusiast" vehicles in that age range and on all the other forums that I belong to the only posts are about how to modify or repair the vehicle yourself and few if any people would even consider going to a shop to work on their old car. I think part of the charm of owning a car that is old but you find interesting or in my case couldn't afford when they were new, is wrenching on it yourself. It's like a "hot rod" now, not really practical and not really worth anything so you wrench yourself to make it something reasonable. Thanks to a good buy and repairs performed by me I have under $2k into my Boxster including the purchase price.
I can totally see why the dealers mentioned that seem to provide poor service to owners of these older, not worth much, cars do that. It is probably their experience that a person who has a 5-8k Boxster does not want to replace 10k worth of worn out parts. Mechanics typically work on commission, they get a percentage of every labor hour that is charged and a dealership is in the business of selling parts so as noble as they should be they still have to worry about keeping their doors open so it only makes sense to allocate your resources to the cars that will keep the lights on.
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