Sandro of Aeschbach Auto in Wisconsin took to TikTok to answer one of the internet’s most popular automotive questions: “Why does it cost more to service European vehicles?”

He explained, “The engineers have different priorities.” He admitted, “The term over-engineered gets used a lot.” But he wanted to define the term.

Imagine any metric an engineer shoots for while designing a new car. It may be 0-60 time, speed around a corner, or overall weight. Sandro explained, “the Europeans, they will say, ‘if I can gain 5 or 10 percent in whatever this metric is–for handling or safety or for performance–by making it twice as complicated, they will do that.'”

These cars may perform better when new. But the added complexity translates to longer maintenance procedures. “They are more complicated to service, they are more complicated to diagnose.” Longer maintenance procedures mean more shop hours and a higher total bill.

How much more? “As a general rule, seemingly simple maintenance items can be three, four, five hours on some of the European vehicles.” There isn’t anything wrong with these cars, per se, their designers just had different priorities. “In the manufacturer’s mind, that’s what it costs if you want to own that level of vehicle.”

You can see Aeschback Auto’s original video embedded below: