It depends on your willingness to keep it, wrench on it yourself, and on the availability of spare parts.

We’re living in the golden age of automobile safety, granted.

I think my pickup is the only vehicle I’ve ever owned where the water pump is a simple job. All of the rest have been labor intensive, usually driven by (and replaced alongside) the timing belt. I’ve never bought a car newer than 12-years old.

We’re living in a golden age of automobiles and no one is noticing.

Another example. My first car was a cherry-red 2002 Mini Cooper S.

New cars may be more reliable, but old cars are longer-lasting. Difference.

Late 80's-late 90's cars will always be better imo. My early 2000's E46 (yeah I know, BMW) had way more issues than my 240 that was 11 years older. The way I look at it, anything from the early 2000's that’s still on the road has started to hit that point where everything starts to break. Buy something slightly older…

I’ve owned 26 cars from a ‘73 all the way to an ‘18. There’s a sweet spot in the mid-80's to late 90's where cars just seem to want to go forever with just basic maintenance. This is amplified even more if the car has EFI and is super simple. By far the most reliable car I’ve ever owned has been my 1985 AE86 GTS. It’s…

Nice 60s Cadillacs were the best. Is it a Fleetwood?

True enough. The most important thing with old things, is keep us moving...

“they just need to keep moving”

This. 100000x this. 

Way too many variables to take a side here. Depends on the car, depends on the mileage, depends on how it was maintained or repaired, and it depends on what components the consumer is expecting to be “reliable”.

Honestly I’ve been driving my ‘64 Cadillac for over ten years and mostly just change the oil and do routine maintenance. It’s been extremely reliable and I only had to rebuild the carburetor once. I’m not sure it was ever rebuilt when it was dragged it out of the barn it had been sitting in for 26 years. It’s so…

Two old cars are more reliable than one new car. One new car will be off the road for maintenance and repairs more often than both of the old cars.

Maintenance is Critical, Just pulled this out of my BMW 850 this weekend. New filter is on the right. It wasn’t that hard and the filter is about $12

What qualifies as “old” and what qualifies as a “newer used?”

As a newspaper delivery boy, I had the unfortunate experience of seeing one of these turds 7 days a week in a customer’s driveway, identical to this one:

$150/ cylinder-and you actually got to drive it? Hell, that's already a win right there!

Recently bought one for $1,500 and it has actually been drivable for one week out of the month I’ve owned it so far! That’s a win, right?

Yes— Jaguar v12 —-because I want one and it’ll be a terrible decision when it eventually happens.