I think you'll find that there are cars in the world that we never get to see here in the UK.

Cars built for specific market and home market, We occasionally see a few 'grey imports' which are built purely for the Japanese home market.

As for needing diagnostic tools to repair cars, That is mainly a trick used by manufacturers to force people into taking their car to a franchised dealer. I remember looking at Mercedes diagnostic tools. They would sell you a Mercedes tool but, it would not do all the operations that the tool they supply to the franchised dealers could do.

Edited by Wackyracer on 14/07/2014 at 19:09

Isn't this why you see lots of Hilux/Landcruiser/Patrol etc in middle of nowhere.

When i was still on the cars i used to visit the ports of Southampton, Tilbury, Sheerness regularly among others, on these ports particularly you could see rows of good used cars waiting for returning cargo/car transporting ships...good stuff went in shed loads to Africa, things like Landcruiser Colorados, Shoguns and Volvo 850's etc were common sights, didn't see too much modern German or French offerings in the lines though except for 406's, many hundreds of the better old school Mercs had already been shipped out to far east during the late 80s, the company i worked for had regular contracts for that.

Of course you will see an abundance of 4x4s yet even these are very complex machines today, they are just more reliable for the terrain. I'm not talking about off road travelling - there are plenty of unsealed roads all over the world in remote place even Australia, where saloon cars can easily travel.
In the middle East for example saloon cars are sold in the millions and there are plenty of isolated areas there.. I know Arabs are pretty good at make do and mends, I've seen them take truck engines apart in the middle of nowhere but when it come to computer tech what do they do then?

As well as an fn3 diesel Civic and and an L200 classic shape, both including lots of electrickery, I own two motorbikes. One is a BMW R 1100 S which has the usual fairly low-tech Motronic injection because it's pre-canbus, and a Yamaha FJR 1300A.

The Yamaha has an LCD screen which displays fuel level, coolant temperature, gear position, odometer, trip meter etc. It also has the facility, without using any fancy tools, to display and cancel fault codes for all the ecu and sender functions, the abs stored codes,cycle and operate and test the abs, adjust the injector CO levels, and test the throttle postion sender voltage output and probably a few other functions that I have forgotten.

All this is achieved by manipulating the dashboard select and reset buttons, the ignition switch, and for some of the functions the safety cut-out switch and start buttons in various timed sequences. The abs test requires access to a shorting link in the loom under the dash which can be activated by a paper clip.

If this can be incorporated in a 2006 motorcycle - why can't it be built into modern cars?

There were probably people who said 'enough with progress' in 1911. It's a good job nobody who mattered listened to them!

Edited by Sofa Spud on 15/07/2014 at 14:30