I don't know how you grew up, but one thing I remember very well about my grandfather is that he was one of those guys who liked doing things himself. Besides being the person who taught me to read and even made tapes of me reading at age three and four, he was quite frequently working on something.
Maybe it was a Revell model on his workbench, or maybe it was the white Corvette Stingray with the split rear window he had sitting in front of the garage. It was white, once, and had most certainly seen better days. And he truly planned to get around to fixing it up, but there were always other projects also calling out for his time. And work, of course. Always work, getting in the way of our fun.
As an adult, I know the feeling. But as a child, I just saw my grandfather working on stuff. And I loved helping him in the garden. I also delighted in the bicycle someone had dumped, and that he fixed up and painted so I could ride it when I visited.
During my lifetime, he wasn't into motorbikes. But I found out later, through old family photographs, that hadn't always been the case. Besides a minibike and a go kart in the '60s, there's this fantastic photo of my grandparents just after they were married with a vintage Indian motorcycle that they apparently rode together.
Although the bike was gone long before I was born, I'd be absolutely shocked if he didn't work on it eagerly back when it was his. That DIY tendency was just so deeply ingrained in who he was, as a person.
But as anyone interested in either cars or bikes can tell you, things have only gotten more complicated over time. There are so many more sensors and electronic components to worry about, and in some cases components that are made specifically to only play nicely with one vehicle (or platform), and that can't easily be used to modify, say, an older generation of that same vehicle.
Stuff that requires a special dealer computer to talk to your vehicle in order to address. Or worse, owner's manuals that tell you to go see your authorized OEM dealer for your vehicle for the simplest of tasks that you would've just done yourself before, like oil changes.
Like, many people have a hard line they might draw about what work they're willing to accomplish on their own. But at the same time, discouraging someone who wants to do it from changing their own oil is just depressing.
And there's a world of difference between what should be simple, routine maintenance and, say, a full bottom end engine rebuild. And while that's not the only reason that people might be working on their vehicles less in 2024, it's certainly a contributing factor.
Unsurprisingly, auto parts dealers are feeling the pinch. In late October, O'Reilly Automotive cited low demand for auto parts as a major contributing factor to it lowering its profit and sales outlook for the year.
Just a couple of days ago as I write this, in November 2024, another major auto parts chain, Advance Auto Parts, announced that it's closing over 700 stores and four distribution centers by mid-2025. It also reported at the same time that sales were down slightly, but profits were up.
And as we head into 2025, DIYers are going to see another factor to discourage us from working on our vehicles: Expected higher prices on imported parts due to tariffs. That's not just idle speculation; the CEO of another major auto parts retailer, AutoZone, said on the company's most recent earnings call that, and I quote, "If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer."
The same article, published by Yahoo! Finance, cites multiple other companies across multiple industries that say virtually the same thing: If they encounter tariffs, they'll raise end prices on their products for consumers.
And sure, the tension between online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores is constant, ongoing, and is most certainly another layer added to the problem. But at its core, if vehicles are already more and more complicated to work on, and then you add all these other complications on top of it, it becomes a question of how difficult things have to be before even the most dogged DIYers just throw up their hands in disgust and walk away.
There will always be dedicated and stubborn folks who work on their own stuff. But at the same time, it's a lot harder to get started when so many factors come together to make it both more difficult and expensive than ever.
