Famously, 1990's Mitsubishi and Subaru vehicles can basically rust down to the frame before the drivetrain stops functioning. And they don't wait long to start on the former.
I'm not confident enough on when that era ended to say it magically ended in 2000, just that it hadn't ended by late enough in the 90's to use a big fat brush and say "the 90's". The closest I've been to a Mitsubishi or Subaru maven is 2 degrees of separation.