I have a 30 year old car, but it doesn't have an airbag.
The good news about the Takata recall is that 50 million airbags out there either have already been replaced (including mine) or are able to be replaced under the recall.
The Takata recalls indicate that what specific claims are made about airbag performance are not always accurate, and environmental circumstances and time factor into that.
Takata detonated 27,000 airbags and the highest failure rate vehicles had a failure rate of 2.16%. Those were at that time 12-14 year old vehicles with a faulty airbag detonator and still only 2% failure.
Either way, having no airbag in your car is demonstrably less safe than even a faulty, old Takata airbag.
My main point about the Takata recall though was that there are now 50 million used cars out there that have a new airbag system. So you can find a used car covered by the recall and check to see if the airbag has been replaced and if not then get it replaced for free, and then you have the best of both worlds: new airbag and relatively cheap, used car.
And for tools, you don't need much more than the very basics for most jobs that I would want to deal with.
Now if your car of choice is a 69 chevelle or a Fiero then it's going to be a different story.