I have one hobby that I have had since 1964: I collect and restore antique radios. Some people don't understand the attraction, but when you look at my inventory, there are some radios that were built to a price and others that represented the best that the manufacturer and its designers could do. This is still the case in some ways, but you really have to search for the best ones and they are not cheap.
Some cars are designed well (build quality was not that much of a consideration - most cars are built according to the design drawings, it's the design that is often flawed) and the Subaru Legacy wagon I recently sold is a good example - it went 324,000 km / 200,000 miles and never had major problems other than a wiring harness where the rubber hood over the contacts had been cut off and the connector corroded - not a factory issue. But with the CVT transmission and direct injection, the new Impreza may not last that long. But if I had to maintain a car to last the rest of my life, I would get a 1960's GM car. They had long, trouble-free lives and could be repaired easily.
German car manufacturers have led the world in impossibility to repair things easily. There was an engine computer that had no PROM - everything was loaded into RAM and the computer operated from that. If your battery went dead or got disconnected, you had to tow the car to the dealer to get it reprogrammed. The only German car I ever owned was VW Rabbit and it didn't need a mechanic, it needed an exorcist. It went from new in 1977 to scrap in 1984.
The latest BMW cars have a subscription system for certain options - you have to pay a monthly fee to get the seat heaters to work.
Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware - is still the best advice for people looking for items they buy to be reliable.