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I must have lead a bit of a charmed life with cars. Had a few that gave problems now and then but even when the flywheel had separated from the crank and was flailing around inside the bell housing and clutch asembly the old Morris 1800 got me home. A Hillman Avenger that used to leak water in through the petrol filler cap and if you forgot to drain the wee sediment bowl then you had to drive backwards up any hills otherwise the water got to the carburettor. (Going fishing early one morning in a hurry !! ) Any motor rebuilds I've done have been for performance purposes mostly, only one for dropped valve inserts many years ago.
I've had many company cars and most have been driveable and comparable for the period they were built in and I've always driven them quite hard. The worst was a Mazda 323 wagon which drove like a dog till it wore the first set of tyres out in about 25,000 km and they replaced them and did a proper wheel and suspension alignment and it was a sweet little car after that. Had over 250,000 km on the clock last time I saw it and still going.
2.0 litre Sierra was a cool beast, had one for about 3 years. It had a major frontal at about 100 kph ( someone drove through a stop sign in front of me on open road ). Built like a brick outhouse, saved our lives and was back on the road about 3 weeks later, The Subaru was toasted.
Currently we are both running Mitsi VR4's ( 2.5 litre, V6 Twin Turbo 4wd AYC beasts, basically big Mitsi Evos, same running gear ) and the real trick is to have them serviced regularly. Turbos don't like old oil so the cars get done every 5,000 km.
I reckon that's where half of people problems come with cars, a lack of service, cheap tyres, cruddy oil etc.
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