Well cars and certain appliances used to be fairly mechanical devices, and thus easily maintained with hand tools and a bit of effort.
My dad used to love working on cars until they got CAN and all that, and he maintained their washing machine for nearly 3 decades, until the frame rusted apart.
The latter he could do because it was a simple construction of two drums, a couple of engines, and a simple analog control unit.
Cars at least are incredibly more reliable now than they were just twenty years ago, not to mention twenty years before that, and go back another twenty years and you have the heyday of "planned obsolence".
My dad used to love working on cars until they got CAN and all that, and he maintained their washing machine for nearly 3 decades, until the frame rusted apart.
The latter he could do because it was a simple construction of two drums, a couple of engines, and a simple analog control unit.