[dublin]

A BMW straight six with a manual transmission can be expected to last 300K miles, and if you choose the right one (some models are notoriously bad), the maintenance isn't even that bad. Electronics are damn expensive to fix in any car, though, which is one of the best reasons to prefer older cars with less of that error-prone stuff. German cars have crappier electronics than others, for some reason. (It's no longer even possible to build really reliable electronics in the age of ROHS lead-free solder.)