If you go to one of their service centers (there's a lot fewer of them, nowadays), in the back, you will often find camera bodies and parts for cameras that are fifty years old. They won't necessarily fix it under warranty, but they'll definitely try to fix it, if possible.
When 9/11 happened, they had cameras in the Melville service center from The Pile, covered with that dust, and they busted their butts to get them fixed up and back out there.
They are a very old company, and take their work seriously. There's lots of things to complain about, with them, but they are serious about Legacy.
But even the name predates Nikon by almost two decades according to Wikipedia.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23862471
[1]: https://petapixel.com/2020/07/16/nikon-issues-recall-for-16-...
I'd totally consider something like that, if an issue was bugging me enough.
Not "look like", that's how they operate. I love it, wish all companies were committed to quality and longevity, it would be the kind of world I'd like to live in.
Nikon is also pretty obsessive about compatibility, I can mount lenses from the 70s on my D7100 and the features work.
In terms of underperforming, it's hard to define underperforming. Regardless of what some guy on a blog thinks, I have had many clients comment about how impressed they were with portraits I took of them with lenses from 1971 and 1993, and 0 complain about how the same lenses' corners look soft when shooting a test chart wide-open then blowing it up to 400%.
Thay being said, I'd never replace a lense unless it either broken or I see negative impacts on image quality. If none of that applies I don't see a reason to spend a fortune on new glass just because. Unless of course I want that lens.