I’ve had a few car breakdowns in my life that have left me stranded on the highway. Whenever this happens, I envy the lucky people who manage to live life without the need to own or drive an automobile on a daily basis. The trouble is that there is no way I can do all that I want to do in the time I have available without having my own car. Besides, my hatred of my vehicle quickly passes when I think about how reliable my car actually is. When you think about that there are roughly 30,000 individual parts in a modern automobile and with all the abuses we subject all these parts to – potholes, temperature extremes, lack of maintenance – it’s truly amazing that problems arise as seldom as they do.  That’s because an incredible amount of R&D effort and testing goes into making sure all of these parts are properly engineered into the system.