re: Can you buy new vehicles that do not have fancy computer systems?

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Vehicles I'll give you but modern appliances are trash. My dad still owns my grandparents house. I'm almost 43 and never remember them having another microwave, stove, oven, fridge, washer and dryer etc. Do you know how many of those I've been through in my adult life? I'm easily on my 4th or 5th washer and dryer.

I remember when my grandparents had their ac unit installed because I remember bothering the guy putting it in. I couldn't have been more than 6-7 years old. It still works fine. Good luck getting 35+ years out of one now.

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While some things may have been sturdier and simpler back then, a lot of this can be explained by survivorship bias and repairs. Many products follow the bathtub curve, where failures tend to happen very early and very late in the lifecycle, but fewer in the middle. It is very possible, if not very likely, that your grandparents likewise went through several appliances before landing on those that passed the early failure stage (or were repaired/upgraded earlier in life), and they will tend to work for a very long time afterwards.

I would be willing to bet that 30 years from now people will still be complaining about how shitty new appliances are, and wishing they were as well-made as the ones of today. But, of course, only the best of today will survive that long, so their sample will be biased.