Buy Something and it Will Never Be Yours, Especially if it's a Car.

I've just bought a new car. Not brand new, fuck that, it's a 12-year-old Vauxhall Astra with a knackered gearbox. 

£750 for the car, another £350 for a used gearbox and a lot of graft and hopefully this weekend I'll have a working car. But those are the things you have to do these days to get a cheap car. The whole ULEZ nonsense across the country has pushed the value of small petrol hatchbacks up exponentially. The current market price for the Astra is over £3000. Madness.

But that's digression.

The point is that after getting to grips with the Astra, is the amount of interference the manufacturer has even 12 years down the line. 

For instance I can't just buy any old gearbox, which is very specific to just 2010 and 2011. It has to have the correct gear ratios, because they are coded into the management system of the car. If I got a 5-speed gearbox from a Diesel model with different ratios, it would throw an error. If I got a 6-speed gearbox, it would likewise throw an error, because it's all coded into the software of the car.

The same goes for the infotainment system. 

By now, the Astra J has been superseded by two more models, the K and the L. Vauxhall have long since washed their hands of the car warranty-wise. However, if I bought a better specification infotainment system from wrecked Astra J, say with bluetooth, Navigation and the like, unfortunately it won't work. The infotainment system is coded to the car and not only that, but the car has a list of what specification it left the factory with. So any attempt at up-speccing the car radio with another Vauxhall unit is stopped by the car itself.

To make the new higher-spec unit work, you have to get a key code from Vauxhall/Opel that you can enter into the car using Vauxhall software that then tells the car it can now allow the new entertainment system with the higher spec. I'm sure at some considerable cost. 

And that's how they get you even on a 12-year old car. 

It's crazy and should really be outlawed. If you buy a product, then while it's under warranty then fair enough, any changes to the spec of the vehicle outside the dealer network could have ramifications to the warranty. 

But on a 12-year old car well outside the warranty? I don't think so. At some point after the warranty, the car really should be open and code-free software-wise. You should be free to do whatever you like with the car. Stick a better gearbox in it, better radio, nicer display, you name it. Within reason and insurance liabilities. 

Ah, insurance. That gets me onto the next point. I see in my latest car insurance policy that there are now specific exclusions if you hack the car's software. So again, it's forcing you to keep that car as it was from the showroom.

Do a bit of DIY by downloading a hacked/licence free version of software so you can run Android Auto or Apple CarPlay without paying dealer prices? Or download Android onto your infotainment system instead of the manufacturers software? Added an aftermarket towbar and had the car spec changed to allow it without using approved software?

Oopsie! Your car is now uninsured.

Now don't get me wrong, we've not got to the point yet where insurance assessors plug computers into wrecks and download all the parameters from the car. But we're not that far away from it. The Police can already download information from the engine management to show how fast a car was going when it had an accident. It won't be long before insurers do the same to make sure you weren't over the speed limit at the time, or that all the modules have the correct software in them. Any deviations from the norm I assure you would result in the insurer not paying out.

It's interesting how the automotive market is moving in many ways away from DIY repair, following the Apple ideology. Eventually a car will have the same intrinsic value as a white good like a washing machine. It will just be a product, you won't be able to do anything with it other than the basic maintenance that the manufacturer allows. 

And there's the crux of the matter: it's what the manufacturer deems is acceptable, rather than you having the freedom to repair and modify within what's sensible regarding insurance risks. Obviously performance enhancements would attract higher premiums, but updating the software on the radio? Really?