The one and only new car that I've owned was a Maestro Diesel with the 2 litre Perkins engine . We had it for about 15 years and did 240,000 miles in it. Everyone in the family borrowed it and It always returned 50mpg. It was completely reliable, never had a new clutch, injectors changed or the head off but sadly the body gave up the ghost to the dreaded tin worm. Such a pity that Rover couldn't have developed it into something that people would buy in sufficient numbers to keep them afloat. I find it sad that just about every car on the road now is foreign or built by a foreign company.
The 60s were a great time for car tinkerers Peter with loads of parts available from scrapyards and the like and no computers to worry about, Just a pity that as teenagers we never had any money to spend on our vehicles but it was a steep learning curve and things were kept going.
I wonder what the old time mechanics would think of our code readers , multiple sensors and cars going to sleep at nights.