I do my own servicing and am familiar with my old car's sounds and 99% of the time I know when somethings on the way out and replace it before it leaves me on the side of the road. The few times in 20 years that I've had a problem on a trip I've been able to fix it to get me home with a handful of tools that I pack in the boot.

And servicing an old car is easy (compared to new ones) and cheap compared to needing to take it to the dealers and getting slugged hundreds of bucks a go.