100% agree here. They all need maintenance, but higher end ones have pricer parts and less common, affordable after market parts. Cars are for the most part a utility and a cost center. You want to minimize your cost and maximize your value gotten out of it.

I despise cars as a status symbol, because again it’s just going to turn into a rust bucket like the rest of them at the same or worse rates, but also it just sets people up for failure in the lives just tens of thousands down the drain, literal years of work, for something’s that’s nearly worthless by the time they pay it off.