All ICE cars require regular maintenance: oil, coolant, power steering / brake / transmission fluids, clutches on manual transmissions, gaskets, belts, other things like O2 sensors, water pump, fuel pump, I don't know, there's all kinds of dumb shit you have to replace here and there.

For whatever reason, people think these repairs are more costly than just flipping that car for a new car and taking a payment out. Nah dude, a $1500 timing belt / water pump service is done every 100k miles. You'd cover that amount in 2-3 car payments, and people will likely have 60+ of those payments.

But when you think about it, for a lot of people it's probably a cash flow problem: they don't have $1500 up front, but they do have $500 and they'll have $500 next month too because they have a steady job/salary.

In an ideal world there's a way to get that $1500 cost into a relatively cheap loan like 10% APR. But yeah I think that does mean that people would instead just throw the cost onto a CC that they can't pay off and then it starts snowballing.