I owned an '89 Ford Escort GT from 1989 to 1999. I never had any serious problems with it. A high schooler totaled it leaving football practice at A&M Consol.
Then I owned a '99 Chevy Metro LSi. I was married, and this was a work car. It got terrific mileage, and I only rarely got up on the highway with it, so the lack of HP wasn't really an issue. This car was totaled by a 19 yo on her cell phone in 2008. I also never had any real problems with this car.
Then I owned a '08 Honda fit until the front end fell off in 2021. Apparently that's not uncommon for the Fit, and this is a very hilly town, I did a lot of scraping pulling into parking lots around town. In 98k miles of driving, I'm not sure that anything ever broke on this car. I think all of the work I ever had done was routine maintenance, replacing things like tires, batteries, air filters, etc.
I've covered 32 years with three cars in the previous paragraphs. I've taken care of my cars, and they've always taken care of me.
EDIT - And for 32 years I drove a stick shift. Finally bought my first automatic in November 2021.
