Cars are solidly now in the realm of high technology, and as such, will need continuous updates to remain viable in the market place, just like phones, computers etc.

Buying a new car today outright, makes no fiscal sense. The old rule of thumb for a new car was an ROI in 10+ years. Can you see yourself owning one of these new cars for that long? Without a warranty? The biggest issue is the extremely high amount of electronics in these cars that will be out of production as soon as the model ends, and are extremely expensive. So while you may have a perfectly mechanically reliable diesel engine powertrain...a PCM has you stuck in limp mode, is hard to find and costs north of $5k if you do. This maintenance cost structure pretty much ensures a very short product life.

Just for the sake of example, in my observation there are slightly more OM642 parts that have gone NLA than there are for the OM603, 20 years its junior. Hard to say definitively which of the two will be supported longer, or for how long.

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Stable Mates:
1987 300TD 310K mi (Hans)
2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee OM642 165k mi (Benzrokee)