I think it is a crying shame that we need to buy whole replacement units rather than fix individual components. It is expensive and certainly not "green".

That said, the stock holding of the millions of parts required would be prohibitive and the time taken to strip things like wing mirrors down to fix a fault sub component at a glass palace dealership would probably cost more than the original part.

There is a trend for some repairers though, ABS units can be re-built on a PX basis and DPF can be cleaned.

One company I visit repairs very high spec and very expensive surface mounted circuit boards by hand so it is possible and they had some of the biggest magnifying glasses and microscopes that I've seen.

Astra door mirror casings must be seriously expensive, both vanished from the car belonging to the daughter of my late next door neighbour, she never did replace them.

This had got to be a winner of an idea, there was a time you could buy lots of individual parts, which gradually changed and you had to buy increasingly more of the car you don't need to get the often cheap item which breaks.

It is a good idea but wont it come under copyright which he could be sued for, maybe those that had the idea were stopped doing it for that reason as its strange these components gradually disappeared ? which would account for the reason you had to buy whole units instead of parts...

There are a lot of "patent" parts on the market and these don't seem to be problematic.

Car companies don't make much money selling cars - it is very competitive.

So they seriously mark up spare parts to balance the books. They know that once you own the vehicle you have little choice but to buy spares from them (pattern parts excepted - brake pads, clutch etc).

And whilst I may get annoyed that I have to buy a omplete sub-assembly to make a repair, most people these days simply hand the car over to the dealer/independent and say "fix it".

It is then a balance of labour cost vs parts price - but it is worth noting that designs are optimised to reduce costs and often require specialist jigs etc to make a repair feasible.

Thanks for that link Stevieb, thanks to doggie paws there are some splits on the rubber seal along the bottom edge of the side opening read door of my Landcruiser, looked up the part and a new door seal is around £150, one piece goes right around the door, from that link assuming the measurements of the seal profile agree i can replace the whole door seal for about £25, 1/6th the cost and free del.