You can't fight rust and degrading rubber. That's whats killing these old cars. My parents just walked away from a 14 year old Subaru. Headgasket was shot, fuel lines and brake lines rusted and shot, whole laundry list of other rusted and shot components like suspension, dash lit up like a chrismas tree, total bill was going to look like $15k for a car that wasn't worth $9k even before all this went down. A car is a wear item and eventually needs replacing unless you have years worth of knowhow and own expensive equipment like a lift and sometimes specialized tools for your vehicle.

> That's whats killing these old cars.

Matter of perspective.. the only thing you list that I'd consider a concern to investigate is the "dash lit up like a chrismas tree". Everything else you mention is cheap replacement work.

The warning lights could be just a few cheap sensors but could also be very expensive ECU replacements. So that one I'd have to dig deeper but the rest wouldn't bother me to buy such a car and fix it up in a weekend.

"popular reliable" is basically just "what all the rich people bought last decade"

They maintain value because a Sienna that's had an easy 100k miles with by the book maintenance is in much nicer shape and inherently has more life left than a Pacifica that was rode hard and put away wet over the same time period and distance.