I'm referring to my consistent experience of buying both laminated chipwood and veneer wood things, then seeing the former disintegrate within 5 years and the latter last 10 years with no visible damage.
It's all good now, I just wish it didn't take me 10 years to gain this knowledge. On another hand if I got it much earlier it wouldn't benefit me either because I could only afford cheap stuff anyway.
It's a 100% surviorship bias. The knockoff "ikea" style flatpack dresser that I assembled (incorrectly) when I was 12 lasted 20 years, and only finally went away because I was moving in with my girlfriend and we could afford slightly more "real" and coordinated furniture. It would have continued to work for longer.
The stuff that lasts 100 years is primarily just whatever is bought by people who treat their stuff well. That has vastly more impact than any product design excluding the modern planned obsolescence and negligence with electronics.
Basically any Toyota can make it to 250k miles, but the Million Mile Lexus is still impressive to people because it tells you about the history of the car more than the manufacturer. If you want to know what cars will make it to 1 million miles, you don't look at reliability stats, you look at what was bought by middle aged wealthy men who were good friends with very careful mechanics.
Of course a brand that sells appliance commuter and family hauling cars to people who are generally rich enough to buy enough extra capacity they're not flogging it and just pay to have it well maintained is gonna have them go to high miles. The first owner or two are basically "free" from a wear and tear perspective.
Meanwhile the average Nissan is getting driven hard right off the lot, missing fluid changes and the owner's kids are doing WWE in the back seat all right off the lot.
Unless you really wad it up any car will keep going until you stop maintaining it and get in a maintenance hole. If you never neglect to maintain it you'll never be in a hole where the sum total of needed maintenance is more than it's worth barring exceptional circumstances relevant to specific models with exceptionally high costs or low values.
This. It's equally funny and sad when I see new luxury cars with heavily scuffed rims. I don't care how well engineered the car is, it's not going to last.
Isn't this also down to age? That is, stuff like that built 100 years ago is - in my head - better quality.
However, this may very well be survivorship bias - of course anything built 100 years ago still around today is good, because anything that wasn't as good is long gone. Like my ikea furniture will be as soon as I try to move it.