We recently had to replace the passenger side mirror on one of our cars. The mirror cast almost $1,000!!
Cars, just like about everything else, have gotten more complicated over the years. There was a time when cars were simpler and didn’t have lots of parts, but modern cars have an unbelievable number of parts, including all sorts of electronic components for powering high-tech accessories.
Today, cars are more complex, and have many parts that you can see and many more that are completely hidden. Just thinking about the passenger door on our car that just had the mirror replaced…. it contains parts to control the windows, locks, side mirrors, plus all the pieces for the door latches and handles.
I read somewhere that the average car today is built with about 30,000 parts — some of these are small nuts and bots and some parts are much larger, like the engine block.
So why are parts for cars so expensive? Why did a “simple” mirror cost us almost $1,000? I suppose there are a lot of legitimate reasons, like rising costs affect just about everything — car parts are no different, tight supply chain problems, higher labor costs, people don’t buy parts very often, so there may be a storage fee, maybe parts cost more because more people are doing DIY repairs to save money, the parts are more complex for todays cars, some car parts are proprietary and are patented, and unless you are installing the part yourself, there’s an associated labor cost to go along with it.
I read all the time about cars being stolen and then being sold for their “parts.” I’m beginning to see why.
If you look at car thefts, for the most part, when a car is stolen for profit — not just to take a joy ride — valuable parts are removed from the car because they are worth more individually than collectively as a complete vehicle. Also, a complete vehicle is much easier to trace than an individual part from that car, so there’s less risk of getting caught….
But again, I’ve strayed a little from the original subject…. what I was thinking when I started writing was that if you bought a car in as many pieces as possible, it would cost over a million dollars. That’s probably a bad guess on my part but my extensive research found one estimate that it would cost $125,000 to buy parts for a car that would sell for $20,000. Obviously the data was a little dated — I’m not sure you can buy a new car today for $20,000….
Anyhow, I’m glad we got the mirror replaced — I’ve always been told that the best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it…..
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