Leif Neland wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Huge wrote
William Sommerwerck wrote

His basic premise makes sense -- more components = lower
reliability -- but the fact is that one can easily find electronic
devices 50 and 60 years old that have never been serviced that
continue to work. Members of this group probably own them.

This is a category error.

No.

Yes, we all have 'n' year old electronic devices, because
we have thrown away the ones that have failed.

And yet cars are in fact MUCH more reliable now even tho
they have a lot more components than they used to have.

My Yaris ran on 3 cylinders. First I changed spark
plugs, because that what usually worked on old cars.
But even with a gap of 1.5mm, the spark was fine.

Because of all those other components that old cars didn't have.

I haven't even bothered to change mine after 10 years.

So I hooked up the OBD-2 reader: Engine misfire cylinder 1.
I exchanged two "spark plug caps" which is really the
ignition coil and some electronics, one unit per cylinder.

Very unusual way to do things.

Now "Engine misfire cylinder 3"
So a "new" used unit from a junk yard gotthe car
running again. The car only had run 460000km, not
sure when, if ever, the spark plugs had been changed.

So new cars are MUCH more reliable.

Yep. Because they have vastly more components.