The original Lotus Elan, offered from ’62 to ’73, was a simple car using many off the shelf parts. That made its maintenance and eventually custodial ownership a pretty simple matter as those parts were easy to obtain. The same can’t be said of its spiritual descendent, the FWD Elan of the early ’90s. That car too shared parts with more common cars, but also had certain unique items that over time wear out and now are hard to find, things like the rubber weather seal around top. It’s not just limited production cars that can suffer from this either. Even cars and trucks built in significant numbers can run into the same problem as time passes and their numbers decline, should they have some odd feature—like Nivomat suspension—the parts can become harder and harder to find, making their ownership a pain. What we’re wondering today is what modern car has just such a feature—an aspect that you think is going to be hard or impossible to maintain—making them a frustrating choice as a future collectible? Image: Wikipedia
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