Because it was about 2:30 P.M on a completely normal weekday, my brain decided that it was a perfect day to change what car I was lusting after. For the last…hour or so it had a been a Volkswagen Golf GTI with plaid and a Sunroof. Incidentally a combination that it’s impossible to purchase (insanity, thy name is equipment packages) but now it was a BMW 220d. Okay it wouldn’t be the hardcore M2. But it would be a nice, economical 2-door coupe with more than adequate performance and amazing economy. Then I remembered that BMW’s diesel engine doesn’t come with something as valuable as mirth for longevity and as simple as a stick.
Because it is a stick. It doesn’t come with a dipstick.

I’d be a hypocrite if I went all “Technology in cars is evil”. It has allowed us to be free of mucking about with carburetors and given us power and efficiency benefits that more than make up for the fact that most every infotainment unit in a car lags behind your common smartphone and will look unbelievably dated in five years. But I’m not concerned about dated interfaces. No what I’m concerned about is technology creeping into places it shouldn’t and compromising the longevity of the car. Which takes me back to the loss of the dipstick.

Now, I know that if I push the buttons on the steering wheel until I arrive to a fourth layer of submenus I will be able to look at the oil quality and quantity according to some fancy algorithms programmed by the very best minds that Munchen can muster. However, even as a member of the tech sector myself, I can’t help but distrust it. A sensor can go bad without warning, which means there’s a small but ever-present chance that your car will tell you it’s filled to the brim with oil when actually it has no oil at all. Or maybe it isn’t and it’s completely safe to drive it for decades trusting in that sensor.

But the inner car guy in most of us will always have that doubt. That lack of certainty that at any moment you can just pop the hood and can physically see the quantity and quality of the oil. Technology is just as good as the people applying it and from a company that brought us VANOS and motorcycles with melting bearings, not to mention the N54 engine (Incidentally, also dipstick-less) and its exploding fuel pumps that was so bad it caused a lawsuit. You will forgive me If I prefer the old fashioned metal stick.

At least they haven’t done what Mercedes did with their now-infamous “sealed for life” transmissions. If you have no idea of what I’m talking about let me welcome you into the Hooniverse, I hope you’ll be happy here. In the peak of german engineering cockiness Mercedes decided that pesky things such as transmission maintenance would no longer be necessary and as such designed an automatic transmission which would last the entire life of the car. Which it did provided you considered the entire life of your Mercedes about 100k miles. At which point the transmission would start grenading itself. And then Mercedes would gladly sell you a new transmission (Or a Mercedes, I mean…you had already come to the dealer anyway). There actually is a way to service them but how many owners of Mercs and Jaguars saddled with that transmission were actually going to poke around it?

I could’ve continued with my inner monologue about how these are but a few examples of engineer’s hubris making things worse for the consumer that loves his car so much he wants to stick with it until he can no longer drive. How it’s unlikely that modern cars will see the same survival rates as older models. How software rot could affect vehicles as they age and how much time would it take for the new generation of shadetree mechanics to get creative with a car’s computer. But unfortunately it was around 2:35 P.M, which means that the BMW 220d had become passe and I was now wanting a Cadillac Escalade ESV. Body-on-frame, with its column shift and the coolest door handles fitted to any car today. Plus a dipstick.