Yeah, part of the reason cars back then were so serviceable was because they broke down all the time. A modern car with regular servicing can last very long mechanically. The amount of electronic creature comforts, safety devices etc. are often what drives up repair costs and lead to some cars becoming uneconomical to repair. Cracked windshield? That’ll be 1000 bucks because the rain sensor for your automatic wipers will have to be recalibrated. Dead headlight? $2000 because we can’t replace individual LEDs, have to take the front of the car of to replace the whole headlight assembly and calibrate the adaptive front lighting system so that it follows road curvature again.

Japanese society is very old-fashioned, male dominated, hierarchical and “I’m older than you so that means I’m right”. Japan’s cybersecurity minister admitted a couple of years ago that he had never used a computer in his life. While I understand the frustration it is (unfortunately) not surprising that these changes do not happen in a timely fashion.