Cars today are better than 50 years ago, but not much better than 15 years ago.
You must be young.
Cars used to last five years before falling apart. It helped drive the whole auto leasing industry, because nobody wanted something that turned into an old rust bucket in half a decade.
The reliable Japanese cars came in, and every marker suddenly started offering five, eight, and even ten year partial warranties.
Today, a ten-year-old car is very common. I kept mine until it was 12-years-old, and in that time it never had a breakdown. Just tires, oil changes, and many lightbulbs. My previous cars (Volkswagen, Isuzu, Ford, Ford, Mercury) had long been scrapped by then.
