There is only one way in my head I can make the jeep metaphor make sense.
Stiles and Lydia broke up over the jeep because she was certain it was going to kill him (lbr that cars always been a fucking death trap) and Stiles left because of it. Derek (who handily also is now a mechanic with an auto shop) saves the jeep and spends years fixing it...because if he can make the jeep safe then he thinks Stiles might come back? But he fixed it (sort of) and Stiles never came back, so he ends up resenting the blasted thing. He wanted it to stop working once and for all so he could accept Stiles was gone. But he couldn’t stop himself from trying to fix it every time it broke down because maybe this time would be different. And every time against all odds it was fixed, and every time...no Stiles. Derek is a character with a masochistic guilt complex a mile wide and he cant bear to get rid of the jeep because it serves as a painful reminder. Then he has to see his son, who is so much like Stiles, develop such a fixation on something that he associates with losing Stiles.
It could be because he had feelings for Stiles of some vague description. (I'm a Sterek shipper, I'll begrudgingly take any crumbs I can get.) But generally speaking, so many of the pack moved away from Beacon Hills. Maybe he was grasping at anything he could to keep his pack members close by - because pack means everything to Derek.
I just love how happy the four of them are here. Alex is pure sunshine and I feel like he's barely holding himself back from reaching back and taking Henry's hand in his when he puts it on the back of Nora's seat. Nora is a goddess and really captures our Nora from the book in this scene, even if we don't hear what's being said, her interaction with Alex here is spot on. Pez is just so smiley and having a great time. Henry looks devastatingly handsome and sublimely happy.
This is one of those scenes that I want more of, I want to know their conversations so badly.
Okay i swear I remember something about DOB keeping the jeep after TW wrapped. So like, assuming that's true, did production just have to get a different one or did some poor staffer have to call up the team of a dude who flatly refused to participate in this cluster fuck to be like "well actually, we need it. It's an important plot point"
He probably didn't keep it or they probably just got a different one but imagining that conversation has me cackling.